TABLE 8.

                                            Common Salt on bush lands remote from crops.

_____________________________________________________________________________________ Sample. — Per cent. of Salt. — Remarks _____________________________________________________________________________________

 4    ..       ..       ..             •222 (a)                      Mixed scrub and white thorn.
 6    ..       ..       ..             •286 (a)                      Mallee scrub.

10 .. .. .. •367 Tall mallee and Ti-tree. 12 .. .. .. •332 Morrell. 15 .. .. .. •499 Tall black and white Mallee, and Ti-tree. 16 .. .. .. •136 Salmon gum forest. 17 .. .. .. •337 Small open Mallee and Ti-tree. 19 .. .. .. •396 (a) Black-butt and Blue-bush. 21 .. .. .. •390 (a) White Gums with Salt Bush etc. * ___________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                        * Photographs in Appendix A.

No cropping had been attempted near those soils. Two of them (Nos.19 and 21) indeed lie north of the land, which has been considered safe for farming, and the samples were taken chiefly to confirm an expectation that as one travelled northward into better land and lower rainfall the salt content would be greater than farther south. These were very fine soils. Turning to the other bush soils from Salmon Gums southwards, most of these contain an excess of common salt, This is especially so in No. 15 (McKinnon's block), No. 12 and No. 10, all of them growing morrell or similar big timber. These soils contain too much salt for safe farming, and two of them (Nos. 12 and 15) much resemble on another in appearance, being of a soft fluffy nature and presumably similar in character. Nos. 4 and 16 contain a moderate amount of salt but not enough to preclude cropping provided the rainfall is sufficient. No.17, taken in small open mallee and ti-tree near Grass Patch, likewise contains too much salt for safe farming.

                                                                                             The General Indications.
              

The results of the analyses of bush lands are disappointing, and they indicate that many of these soils, at all events, contain too much salt to make wheat farming profitable. So long as the rainfall is good during the growing period the crops on such lands will appear strong and healthy, but on the occurrence of a dry spell they will go off, and the final yield will fail to redeem its early promise. Such lands taken all over will give a low average yield. In ordinary season such land will yield proportionately better with hay than with grain owing to its earlier maturity, but not in seasons of late rains. These remarks do not apply, however, to all of the soils in the district, and confining attention now to those 16 soils from Esperance which were sampled in the belief that they were suitable for farming, and neglecting soils outside the farming area or outside the district altogether, we get the following results:—

                                                               TABLE 9.

                                          Percentage of Salt in Esperance soils.

______________________________________________________________________________ Safe. Doubtful. Too Salt. ______________________________________________________________________________ Sample. Salt.% Sample. Salt.% Sample. Salt.% ______________________________________________________________________________

 2    ..       ..       •108 (a)                   4                 •222 (a)                   6                 •286 (a)
 3    ..       ..       •113                       14                •216                         8                 •368
 5    ..       ..       •034                        ••                  ••                            9                 •410 
 7    ..       ..       •035                        ••                  ••                          10                 •367

16 .. .. •136 •• •• 12 •332 22 .. .. •115 (a) •• •• 15 •499

                          ••                            ••                  ••                          17                •337
                          ••                            ••                  ••                          20                •301

______________________________________________________________________________

           of these soils I consider : Six are safe ; two are doubtful ; eight contain too much salt.

Results of the former inquiry.

The present inquiry has been thorough in so far as the nature and character of the salt trouble at Esperance is concerned, and has yielded very definite information regarding a limited number of soils. In 1912 a more superficial examination of a larger number of soils was made, and in the light of our present experience some of these results can be used with confidence. It is not possible to use all because some of the samples had been take to nine inches only, some to 18 inches, and some of them from places of which I can find no record. Samples taken only to none or 18 inches have no very definite value in this class of work. Attention is here confined, therefore, to all those analyses of Esperance soils which were carried out to a depth of 36 inches, and which I am able to locate. From the percentage of common salt at each depth I have calculated the approximate average content of the soils to 36 inches, making allowance for the greater thickness of the lower samples. The results are given in Table 10.

                                                                          TABLE 10.

                                Percentage of common salt in certain Esperance Lands (1912).

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                Depth of Sample.                                         
                                                                   ______________________________________

Location, Esperance Road 0in. to 6in. 6in. to 18in. 18in. to 36in. Weighted Average. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 30-Mile (Baker's) .. .. .. •132 •327 •337 •299 30-Mile (Wace) .. .. .. •017 •056 •198 •120 35-Mile (Rogers) .. .. .. •010 •132 •515 •303 35-Mile (Jenkins) .. .. .. •003 •102 •432 •250 46-Mile (Thompson) .. .. .. •221 •275 •228 •242 48-Mile (Shepherd) .. .. .. •109 •020 •168 •109 49-Mile (Richardson) .. .. •030 •201 •373 •258 58-Mile (Lewis) .. .. .. •046 •162 •188 •156

                                 ..       ..       ..                 •076              •244                   •512                                •350