Soil Changes Produced By Micro-organisms. 27 
% 
side, and into the adjoining fields. I think of nothing which de¬ 
scribes the color better than the appearance of soil where crude oil 
has been spilled, as is done frequently in orchards where oil pots 
have been used in heating, or, if you please, where the roads have 
been sprinkled with oil. Considerable disappointment is experi¬ 
enced, however, when this blackened surface soil is examined for it 
is often found to be a dry crust, rather than a wet one, one-fourth to 
one-half inch in thickness, underlaid with one or two inches of ma¬ 
terial of a very mealy character, beneath which the soil looks like 
any other soil. Sometimes the surface is so moist as to be slippery, 
due, probably, to the presence of quantities of deliquescent salts. 
As one walks over a field in this condition and breaks through the 
hard crust, the sensation experienced has been likened to walking 
on corn meal or ashes. 
Concerning the condition of the soil met with under the mealy 
layer, I can not go into details since Dr. Headden has treated this 
phase of the question very fully and completely in his publications, 
suffice it to say that free water is seldom found nearer to the surface 
than five feet, and in most cases the soil is in what would be consid¬ 
ered a nice moist condition; again in the heavier lands, we may ex¬ 
pect and do find them rather sticky near the surface and of a gumbo 
character as the water plane is approached. 
The brown color often appears on the banks of the irrigating 
ditches, eight to ten inches above the level of the water, and along 
the upper edge of the irrigation furrows. Extending lengthwise of 
these, it manifests itself a few days after irrigation as broad bands 
of pigment which might easily be mistaken for manure stains, so far 
as color is concerned, especially if the field or orchard had been fer¬ 
tilized recently. It is not uncommon to find large tracts of land 
where the nitrates have become so abundant as to be deleterious to 
the crops, yet where no discoloration is apparent on the surface. 
It is difficult to say in such instances whether no color is being pro¬ 
duced or whether it is developing so gradually and uniformly that 
it can not be detected readily. 
The economic outlook of this problem is, indeed, a serious one. 
Bushels of wheat have been planted on heavy nitre soils, and if it 
germinated at all, only a very small percentage ever came through 
the ground. Oats and barley have suffered the same fate. Corn has 
germinated in some fields, and made a sickly, yellow growth of six 
inches to a foot and then died. Sugar beets, if they grew at all, have 
gone to tops, while the roots have taken on all sorts of abnormal, ir¬ 
regular shapes, typical “tub-beets,” to say nothing of the inferior 
