6 The Colorado Experiment Station 
beets is attributed to the presence of either water or alkali, or as is 
generally the case, to both, it will be advisable to inquire into the 
question of what effect these factors have upon the quality of the 
sugar beet. By quality we here understand the sugar content and 
purity because these are the factors usually considered, especially on 
a commercial basis. I grew beets on a piece of seeped and alkalized 
land for four consecutive years, using beets grown on what we were 
pleased to call good land for standards of comparison. This soil, 
sampled to a depth of ten inches, yielded from 3890 to 25500 parts 
of water-soluble material per million. In determining the water- 
soluble in these samples they were treated with water so long as the 
filtrate showed the presence of sulfuric acid. We were quite well 
aware of the fact that further treatment with water would still take 
a portion into solution but some point had to be taken at which to 
stop and we chose the point given, i. e., when the filtrate ceased to 
yield with baric chlorid a precipitate for sulfuric acid. This was 
already an extreme extent to which to carry the washing because of 
the presence of considerable quantities of calcic sulfate, gypsum, in 
the soil. We did not attempt to study the distribution except in the 
first and second two-inch portions of the soil. In the top two inches 
we found a maximum of 39300, and a minimum of 2890 parts per 
million; the land represented by the former sample became heavily 
encrusted with alkali both in summer and winter under favorable 
conditions of the weather. Sometimes these incrustations became 
as much as one-half inch thick. The salts dissolved out of the soil 
were essentially sulfates of calcium, magnesium, sodium and potas¬ 
sium. The relative quantities of these salts differed considerably 
without showing any definite order of distribution. The predom¬ 
inant salts in the aqueous extracts of the soil were the calcic and 
magnesic sulfates. The sodic sulfate varied from none in the sec¬ 
ond two inches of some sections up to twenty-seven percent of the 
water-soluble of the top two inches from other sections. The 
effloresced alkali consisted chiefly of sodic and magnesic sulfate, 
these salts forming eighty percent of the effloresced mass. 
THE HIGHT OF THE WATER PLANE. 
The hight of the water plane was determined daily during the 
second year of the experiment and weekly during the third year. 
There were four wells sunk in the strip of land which had a length 
of six hundred feet. To avoid too many details and extended ex¬ 
planation I will give the depth of the water plane below the surface 
for the months of May, June, July and August in one group, and 
for September, October and November in a second group. The 
depth of the water plane in Well A in 1897 was from 1.2 to 2.3 feet 
for the first period and from 2.4 to 3.3 feet for the second period; 
