Note 26 — Chapter V · THE DYNAMIC NATURE OF SOIL PHENOMENA.

Leather, however, thinks the water returns from only a limited depth, some 5-7 feet; see, The loss of water from soil during dry weather, by J. Walter Leather, Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, India, Chemical series, I, 79-116, (1908). Dr. George N. Coffey has called the author’s attention to some observations in Western Kansas, where a prolonged drought had dried the soil to a considerable depth. A fairly heavy rain wetted the soil to less than two feet from the surface, and practically all of this moisture had returned to the surface and evaporated within a few days. Such special cases as these, however interesting in themselves, are even less so than the normal cases in humid areas, where a part of the water passes through the soil as seepage, the larger portion returning to the surface, sometimes through distances of many feet.