FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
162 
Percolation is also an important 
question. A professor at the Wiscon¬ 
sin University saturated an eight-foot 
column of sand with 25 to 30 per cent, 
water. In less than twenty-four hours 
he found that nearly two-thirds of the 
water had percolated out of the sand, 
and in four days there was but little 
more than 6 per cent, of water in the 
sand. In sand of various degrees of 
fineness, in four days, there was from 
6J4 to 13^2 per cent, of water, and in 
nine days a little less; but, there was 
not enough water left on the top of the 
column after twenty-four to forty- 
eight hours to continue plant growth. 
We can saturate the soil, but the next 
question is the disposition of the water. 
One man tested his soil, which was a 
clay soil, with a clay sub-soil, and at 
four feet turned to sand. The water 
was seven or eight feet below the sur¬ 
face. In one test the first foot of soil 
contained 10 lbs. of water, the second 
foot 17 lbs., the third foot 14 lbs., the 
fourth foot 10 lbs. and the fifth foot 7 
lbs. The top foot had a limited 
amount of water, which decreased 
slightly from the second to the fifth, 
and then increased until it reached the 
water table; there being 22 lbs. of 
water in the first foot above the table. 
At the end of the growing season it 
was practically the same, except the 
water table had gone down a little. 
Now, consider what water does when 
it gets into the soil. Professor King 
states that one-acre foot of ordinary 
sand contains 4,000 lbs. of phosphoric 
acid, 16,000 lbs. of nitrogen, lime, mag¬ 
nesium, soda, sulphur and other sub¬ 
stances soluble in water. One of the 
greatest effects water has is the dis¬ 
solving in itself salts—just as we dis¬ 
solve salt in water—in order to make 
it valuable and of use to plant life. In 
order to be effective, it must dissolve 
enough of this plant food to be suffi¬ 
cient for the plant, and here we have 
the question of how much water. If 
we use too much water, we dilute this 
plant food and the plant does not thrive 
properly, as the solution is not strong 
enough, and it takes too much water 
to secure the required amount of food. 
Hence, if we use too much or more 
water than the plant will absorb to ad¬ 
vantage, the water must go somewhere 
and will very likely carry some of the 
plant food with it. One of the best 
ways to find whether much water is 
lest by deep percolation is to dig 
trenches as deep as the feeding roots 
and the moisture that passes beyond 
the deepest roots in its downward 
course may be considered wasted. 
The chemical action is also quite im¬ 
portant. Chemical transformation is 
more active when soil or surroundings 
are moist, and the germs which act on 
decaying matter, turning it into ammo¬ 
nia, and ammonia into nitric acid are 
more active when moisture is present. 
We also have the question of evap¬ 
oration. We find in various experi¬ 
ments made in California, they applied 
from eleven to thirteen inches of water 
in ten hours, and found the evaporation 
in the first five days to be 14 per cent, 
and from the sixth to the eleventh day 
11.4 per cent. Some sections of this 
plot were cultivated so the surface of 
