70 The Colorado Experiment Station. 
down into the soil, for it is to be remembered that this land was 
covered several inches deep by a mass of water moving at a rather 
rapid rate for five or more hours about August 12, and again about 
August 20, to a depth of two feet for twenty-four hours. How 
much nitrogen as nitrates this flood water may have contained I 
do not know but it could not have been any relatively large quantity. 
The waters of a reservoir used in irrigating this section of country 
contained only a trace when last analyzed, now several years ago, 
and the return waters as represented by a sample of river water 
analyzed at the same time contained 1.5 p. p. m. Further, this 
water flowed off of and did not evaporate on this land, so I do not 
think that the question of transported nitrates is to be considered. 
The sample taken in September indicates, so far as it is worthy of 
consideration, that these floods removed approximately four-fifths 
of the nitrates present as indicated by the sample taken in June. 
Case No. 25 —This case is given because it presents an ex¬ 
ample of drained land. The area is twelve acres; it is much longer 
than wide, the west and south sides being represented by an irreg¬ 
ular curve, the field being bounded by a low hill, along the flank of 
which runs an irrigating ditch, but its supply of water is not good 
so it is often dry. The owner thought that the bad condition of 
the land was due to an excess of water. It is now something over 
five years ago that he put in three lines of tile drain, from four 10 
six feet deep. I have no map of this drainage system but two of 
the lines, I was informed, run lengthwise of the field for its whole 
length, and the third one is a line run with the idea that it would 
intercept the water that leaks from the irrigating ditch and deliver 
it into the main drains. I do not know the depth of the water 
table, but I do not think that it is at any place materially above tho 
depth of the drains, i. e., four feet. This land has now been 
planted to beets for five years in succession and the owner has never 
harvested a full crop off of all of the field, and for the past three 
years he has had so good as no crop at all. In October, 1909, I 
made a note to the effect that from one-fourth to one-third of the 
field was absolutely devoid of vegetation, even of weeds. I visited 
this field several times during the season of 1910, and‘if there was 
any difference the conditions were worse than in 1909, but they 
were very bad in both years and the crops were practically failures. 
Two roads intersect at the northeast corner of this field. The field 
east of this one and across the road was also planted to beets, the 
stand was in places poor, the ground brown and mealy; the beets 
were, as a whole, poor. The field northeast of it was not cultivated, 
its surface was brown and mealy, but the common sunflower was 
growing in spots arid was very luxuriant. I took two samples of 
soil about three inches deep, one near the south end and the other 
