Sugar Beets. 
11 
The level of the ground water fell about a foot in the next 30 days. 
The irrigation given from the 8th to the 11th was not sufficient to 
raise the level of the ground water quite as high as it was at the 
time of planting and it then fell rapidly, making a fall of almost 
exactly two feet in eleven days. This fall represents the rate of 
drainage and evaporation. The weather was hot and evaporation 
was rapid, but that drainage was active can scarcely be questioned. 
Especially so because the water level in the adjoining, and lower 
lying, land had not been raised and there was only our small and 
local supply of water to be removed. 
The water level, at a point about two hundred feet to the east 
of my plot, was not at any time sensibly effected by the irrigation 
of my plot. The well, the measurements of which form the basis 
of this assertion, is not very far from an underdrain, perhaps 75 
feet from it, but I do not think this fact has very much, if any¬ 
thing, to do with our failure to perceive any change in the level of 
the water in this well. I think it more likely that the amount of 
water used was simply insufficient to force its way so far through 
the soil. 
§ 13. This is not the place I intended to discuss the question 
of water, further than to state the supply furnished to the crop, but 
it was observed that the different wells fell at very different rates. 
I have given the maximum fall for the eleven da} r s immediately 
succeeding the 14th inst. From this date on the water plane fell 
slowly until it reached its greatest depth for the season during the 
first week of October. But during the next fourteen days it rose a 
foot, in some of the wells rather more. 
§ 14. The water level at the lower end of the plot ranged, 
from the end of Julv to October 10, from 3 to 4.5 feet below the 
surface, and there were but few beets in this section, as was repeat¬ 
edly noted in Bulletin 46, but at the western, or higher end, 
the water level was from 5.2 feet to 6 feet below the surface, and 
the crop was excellent. At an intermediate point we have the water 
level ranging, during this same period, from 3.5 to 4.5 feet, w T ith an 
abundance of alkali and yielding a good crop. With a part of the 
facts before us it would be easy to justify the inference that beets 
will not grow where the w r ater plane is from 3 to 4.5 below the sur¬ 
face, but in view of other facts, observed at the same time, we hesi¬ 
tate to offer any statement relative to the cause of the failure of the 
crop to grow in the section in question, either in regard to the alkali 
or the water. 
§ 15. Notwithstanding the nearness of the water to the sur¬ 
face of the ground, the crop showed the need of water throughout 
the latter part of the season ; our field notes showing that on July 
22 the beets were wilted and the water plane low. The weather 
