Sugar Beets. 
21 
differences in culture; but after making due allowance for these 
factors, there remains a decided improvement, due to the improved 
soil conditions, and, so far as I can now see, this improvement is 
wholly in its mechanical condition, brought about by the subsoiling, 
cultivation, manuring and by being left in ridges during the 
winter, exposing it to weathering. That it is not due to improved 
drainage is evident from facts which will be dwelt upon at a subse¬ 
quent time. 
§31. The important fact in this connection is simply this: 
That the water table has not been lowered, except temporarily by 
prolonged dryness or a lack of irrigating water. 
In connection with this question, the influence of the height of 
the water table, an attempt was made to determine the capillary 
power of the soil. It was necessary to break up the natural 
compactness of the soil, so we passed it through a 40-mesh sieve 
and packed it as firmly as we could, by gentle tapping, into a glass 
tube, 1J inches in diameter. Experimenting in this manner we 
found that the water had passed upward 31J inches in seven weeks, 
and in one year and five months the soil was perceptibly moist at a 
distance of 45 inches from the water surface, and quite wet at 39 
inches from the same. If these figures represent the value of 
capillarity in the soil in its natural, undisturbed condition, it would 
seem that our crops ought to have been pretty well supplied with 
water at all times, there being but a short time when the water level 
was more than 45 inches below the surface of the ground. The 
evaporation from the surface in the open field, exposed to a hot sun 
and the winds, is quite different from the evaporation from a small, 
shaded and protected surface, such as that exposed in my tubes. I 
I have made no attempt to determine how much of a part this may 
play in my experiment; I simply acknowledge that it has something 
to do with it, and that is all. 
§ 32. I was at one time quite doubtful whether there was any 
drainage at all out of the area which I was cultivating, and thought 
to test the question by introducing some lithia chlorid into one of 
the wells and observe how long it would require for it to make its- 
appearance in the adjacent wells. Lithia had been looked for in 
the analysis of the residues obtained from the ground water, and 
reported as absent, so I thought that my plan was feasible; but on ; 
examining the water more carefully, using larger quantities, I 
found it present in easily detected quantities. I had samples of the 
residues from the ground water, obtained during the preceding 
eighteen months, and an examination of these showed this element 
to be present at all times. I do not know whether this is true of 
other soil waters in this region or not. It, however, rendered this 
means of detecting a flow of water through our plot inapplicable,. 
