Alkalis In Colorado 
23 
case will make plain the meaning and force of this statement. There 
is a piece of land.,near Canon City which had been planted to fruit, 
apples, plums, currants, etc., but after growing well for about 13 
years, a very large portion of the trees and bushes died in a single 
season. The cause of this trouble was attributed to excessive water. 
We could not well hold to this explanation for, after study and a 
great deal of work, we came to the conviction that the surface waters 
collected at a depth of about 6 feet. The surface of the ground was 
everywhere very rich in nitrates and in places changed from its or¬ 
dinary color, for the most part that of a reddish loam, to a dark brown. 
A slight moistening brought about this change in a remarkable man¬ 
ner. This soil was, when not wet, soft and mealy. This land passed 
into the hands of another party, who was convinced that the main 
trouble was too much water. This man had an extensive system of 
drains put in. I saw upwards of 7,000 feet of trenches open at one 
time to a depth of 354 or 4 feet and they were not gathering enough 
water to yield a flow. I saw many hundreds of feet that did not draw 
any water at all. There was water at about 6 feet below the surface. 
This was very bad water and rich in nitrates. In this case we had 
nitrates on the surface of the land in large quantities and nitrates in 
the water in the ground. Had the nitrates from tile water below come 
to the top or had they gone down from the top with the water? I 
wanted to know the answer to this question and that very badly, for, 
if they were coming from below, it would have an important bearing 
on our investigations. There was no question about their being in 
the water at a depth of 6 feet but this was very bad water; it held 
from 14,250 to 17, 5°° parts of mineral matter in a million parts; of 
this mineral matter, from 425 to nearly 800 parts were nitrates. We 
knew from conditions found in digging a cellar and in making other 
excavations that this water was probably only surface water that had 
been applied in irrigating, so a well was bored at my request to as¬ 
certain more fully what the facts really were. In boring this well we 
found that there was no water after we got a little below 6 feet till we 
got down to 19 feet, when we struck permanent water. This proved 
to be even richer in dissolved minerals than that we struck at 6 feet; 
it carried 22,100 parts of total solids to the million of water, but it 
carried no nitrates. The bottom of this well was several feet in the 
shales which underlie this section. As this water from the 19-foot 
well contained no nitrates it could not furnish any to the water or the 
surface of the land above it and as it came right out of the shales, 
the shales themselves certainly contained no nitrates. This is not the 
only instance of this kind with which I have met. A few years ago a 
man came to see me about some of his cattle that had died, seventeen 
of them within a few days. He wanted to know whether I thought the 
