14 The Colorado Experiment Station 
so good as dead. No water was met with at a depth of three feet; 
the soil was wet but not sufficiently so to drown the tree; at this 
place the soil was somewhat sandy. An excavation had been made, 
but not recently, for the cellar and foundations of a house, this 
excavation was over three feet deep but contained no water. This 
was a surprise to us at the time, especially as we had found the 
soil only a short distance away so wet. Six months later we found 
the conditions essentially the same; except worse if anything. 
There were portions of the ground on which there was a crust about 
3-16 of an inch thick and beneath this from 1*4 to 3 inches of the 
mealy mixture of soil and crystals. Below this the soil was prac¬ 
tically mud, but, as in Orchard No. 1, we had to dig to a depth of 
six feet in order to obtain a sample of ground water. The crust 
in this case was not the ordinary crust of effloresced salts ac¬ 
cumulated above and easily separated from the soil, but was the soil 
particles cemented together by the salts present in it. This crust 
contained 12.523 per cent soluble in water. 
ANALYSIS X. 
WATER SOLUBLE PORTION OF CRUST. Orchard No. 2. 
Per Cent. 
Calcic Sulfate . 8.523 
Calcic Chlorid . 27.388 
Magnesic Chlorid . 25.875 
Potassic Chlorid. 1.581 
Sodic Chlorid . 16.511 
Sodic Nitrate . 19.822 
Iron and Aluminic Oxid . 0.223 
Silicic Acid .*. 0.077 
100.000 
This analysis has been calculated to ioo because on drying 
the mass I found that I could not heat it above no° C. without 
change and at no° only a part of the water was driven off. It 
was therefore necessary to analyze the material as it was and calcu¬ 
late the results to ioo as I have done. The nitrates make up 1.482 
per cent of the air dried soil. 
The next sample was taken to a depth of 1 to 3 inches below 
the crust given above. The water soluble portion ecptalled 8.44 per 
cent. The following analysis has been computed to 100 for the 
same reason given for the preceding analysis. 
