The Fixation oe Nitrogen. 59 
clone, that there is no nitre problem independent of seepage even 
though I have, perhaps, gone almost to a ludicrous extent in 
digging holes and giving the depth of the water table, the character 
of the soil and the drainage conditions to show that the death of 
the trees and other vegetation had not been brought about by an* 
excess of water per se, and I have further given analytical data, as 
it seems to me in superabundance, to show that it is not due to an 
excessive amount of other salts which we think may be injurious. 
I shall deal with this latter subject more fully in another bul¬ 
letin, wherein I shall try to set forth more facts in detail which 
pertain to the effects of the presence of excessive water, large 
quantities of alkalis, and the presence of nitre—for the time being 
it will suffice for the fair-minded to consider that in the most 
disastrous cases—and I use this adjective advisedly, granting the 
reader the privilege of reading into it as much pessimism and 
prophecy as he may desire—that I have described; have been on 
land which has been set to orchards for from twelve to twenty- 
eight years, well drained and otherwise well cared for, in some 
cases it has been excessively irrigated to combat this very trouble, 
which shows that in some cases the natural conditions and the 
intelligent efforts of men have combined to prevent the accumula¬ 
tion of either water or salts leached from adjacent lands, which 
we have furthermore shown do not contain nitrates, and yet we have 
recorded the utter destruction of a twenty-seven or twenty-eight- 
year-old orchard in the short period of six weeks. If this were the 
only destruction wrought I would not at all be justified in using 
the language that I have used, or even in presenting the subject, 
except from its purely scientific side, but it is not a thing which 
has happened in one piece of land, nor in twenty pieces of land, but 
in very many pieces scattered over hundreds of square miles—not 
in patches of a few square feet but in large areas which, though 
irregular in contour are practically continuous for five, ten or even 
more miles. While the scientific features of the problem are of 
primary interest to me and the most of my readers, the magnitude 
of the land values involved and the questions of the future add 
reality and an importance to this question which the public has 
failed to recognize, or recognizing fear to acknowledge. There 
is a saying the “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Per¬ 
haps I have done this. Neither my folly nor courage alters the 
fact that the damage already wrought is immense, and I have 
elsewhere stated that unless something intervenes—what it may 
be we cannot forsee—the situation is serious. This is the practical 
side of the question. 
The conditions obtaining in this case are the justification for 
presenting it as they emphasize the distinctness of this question 
from those of seepage and alkali. The land is on a hillside with a 
