Journal of Agricultural Research 
Vol. V, No. 4 
166 
surrounding the particles and to any oily substances that might be present. 
The influence of this factor, however, must be extremely small, if any, 
because when these soils were slightly damped the amount of water moved 
was generally less or about the same as before. The common belief that 
water moves more rapidly in damp than in dry soils is generally exag¬ 
gerated. When a soil is damped to eliminate the factor of resistance to 
wetting, its absorptive power for water is decreased correspondingly, so 
that one factor tends to counterbalance the other, and at the end the 
CL/ 4 V 
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/7 /a /S 202/ 22 23 /7 /8 /9 20 2/ 22 23 
PER CENT OP MO/STURE 
EXPLPMPT/OA/: 
i i n ■■■ ■ ■ ■ . * Wafer moyecf from mo/s/ ao/Zaf 40 °c- Zo eZ/yso// aZ 0 0 c. 
;> » » » » » C?V. » « »» 
—— » « » ” » » 20°C. " " 0°c. 
I . . it *» at at tj fa 0*C. * r ” 79 ** 20*c. 
Fig. io. —Curve showing the percentage of moisture moved from a moist and warm column to a dry and 
cold column of Miami clay, and from a moist and cold to a dry and warm column of Miami clay. 
results are about the same. Moreover, the soils which stubbornly resist 
wetting are not very common. 
From the practical standpoint the results of the second part of the 
present investigation are probably far more important than those of the 
first part just discuss'ed. These results show the remarkable fact that 
when the dry soil is kept at 20° and 40° and the moist soil at o° C., the 
dry soil takes up very little, if any, water from the moist soil and that 
this quantity of water absorbed decreases with a rise in temperature. 
As will be seen from the data, the percentage of moisture absorbed by 
the dry soil at 20° is in all cases greater than that absorbed at 40° C. 
