io The Colorado Experiment Station • 
wards of eighty percent of this water-soluble. As in the preceding 
land, potash, soluble in water, was present in cpiantities, calculated 
as sulfate, equal to 2.409 percent of the thoroughly dried water-solu¬ 
ble portion. 
The analysis of the soil showed phosphoric acid equal to o. 10 
percent, potassic oxid 0.72 percent and nitrogen equal to 0.091 per¬ 
cent of the air-dried soil. 
The alkali incrustation varied from one to three-eights of an 
inch in thickness and was well distributed over the patch. This 
alkali consisted of sodic sulfate 54-86o percent, magnesic sulfate 
25.684 percent and sodic chlorid 10.751 percent, together 91.3 per¬ 
cent. I was fortunate enough to obtain from the factory that pur¬ 
chased these beets the average yield together with the sugar content 
on which the factory settled for the year in question; the average 
tonnage was nine tons per acre; the sugar in the beets was 15.9, 
apparent purity 83.3; for the ensuing year the yield was ten tons 
per acre and the sugar content 16.0 percent. 
These results fully sustain the conclusions to which we had 
come as the results of our experimentation on alkalized land, i. e., 
that our ordinary alkali per se is not injurious and that the question 
of too high a water-plane is, under some conditions at least, of far 
less importance than is generally supposed. 
these cases are not the only, and are by no means the most 
striking ones that might be cited to support the view that ordinary 
alkali, essentially sulfates, do not necessarily cause either low ton¬ 
nage of beets or low quality and that good results are quite often 
obtained on land in which the water-plane is higher than we sup¬ 
pose that it should be. 
These cases have been cited and these statements made to show 
that the generally entertained notion which attributes poor crops, 
especially a failing in successive crops and a poor quality of beets to 
the action of the alkalis in the first and to seepage in the second 
place, may often be a mistaken one. There is some other factor 
which has been left out of the reckoning. 
I may in this connection again call attention to the fact that in 
both of these soils there is not only an abundance of potash present 
but that a significant quantity of it is soluble in water, further that 
the ground water from my own experimental plot contained notice¬ 
able quantities of phosphoric acid. I do not know much about the 
ratio of phosphorus to potassium to nitrogen whcih is advantageous 
for the highest production of sugar or the part that soda may play 
in the economy of the plant but we have in my own plot soil con¬ 
taining essentially 0.10 (0.095) percent phosphoric acid 1.18 per¬ 
cent of potash (Ko O) soluble in acid, and 0.102 percent of nitrogen 
producing good crops and good beets, the maximum sugar content 
