Colorado Experiment Station 
? 2 
iThe land was not well leveled before planting and when we 
came to irrigate it there were a few spots on which it was impos¬ 
sible to force the water. These spots were comparatively small and 
I thought that the lateral movement of the water beneath the sur¬ 
face would effect a subirrigation, but in this I was wrong. The 
wheat on these spots matured as good wheat as the irrigated por¬ 
tion but the growth of the straw was very inferior to the rest of the 
plots in which they occurred. Because of the evident deficiency of 
water as indicated by the growth and color of the plants, I took a 
set of samples from one of these spots on 2 August, just a few days 
before harvest, and had the moisture and nitric nitrogen deter¬ 
mined in them. The spot chosen was in Section 1700, Fife-Check 
plot. I have just given, in the last table, the moisture and nitric 
nitrogen for the regular samples taken the previous day, 1 August. 
SAMPLE FROM UNIRRIGATED SPOT TAKEN 2 AUGUST, 1913. 
Section 1700 
Depth. Moisture Nitric Nitrogen 
Percent Parts per million 
0 to 6 inches. 12.17 8.70 
7 to 12 inches. 12.00 8.43 
13 to 24 inches. 8.56 2.99 
25 to 36 inches. 7.78 2.18 
37 to 48 inches. 11.32 1.09 
It will be noticed that all of the samples taken i August were 
higher in moisture than those taken 14 July. This is not only true 
of all the shallower samples, but also of all of the samples; even in 
the fourth foot the moisture shows a very decided increase. I know 
of no cause for this except it be found in the fact that between 22 
and 27 July we had a total rainfall of one and forty-three hun¬ 
dredths inches. Assuming that we had a rainfall of one and one- 
half inches, it would give us about 341,000 pounds of water per 
acre, provided it had all reached the ground, been absorbed and 
none had been evaporated, all of which is more or less contrary to the 
facts, for it did not all reach the ground, but lodged on the plants 
and was evaporated from their surfaces and some of that which did 
reach the ground had been lost by evaporation or by the activity of 
the plants and yet on 1 August there is an excess of moisture in the 
soil taken to a depth of four feet, over that present on 14 July, by 
over twice the amount that had fallen as rain and we are neglecting 
the activity of the plants for the whole of the intervening period, 
'l'his slight rainfall is undoubtedly the cause of the moisture in the 
first foot of the unirrigated spot. 
The nitric nitrogen is also very much higher in this dry spot 
than in the regular samples, almost as high at the surface as the 
fallow ground, and decidedly higher in the lower portions of the 
boring. This may be due to the fact that the wheat plants were 
