In the first case in general, the principle of the method depends upon the exposure of the soil for a given time under given conditions, to an atmosphere of the gas to be absorbed. The principle of the second class of determinations depends upon the extraction, usually by means of suction, from a given mass of soil of the gaseous matters therein contained. The general details of the methods of procedure for the first class are found in the following directions for manipulation: =280. Determination of the Maximum Hygroscopic Coefficient.=—The fine earth, in Hilgard’s method, is exposed to an atmosphere saturated with moisture for about twelve hours at the ordinary temperature (60° F.) of the cellar in which the box should be kept. The soil is sifted in a layer of about one millimeter thickness upon glazed paper, on a wooden table, and placed in a small water-tight covered box, twelve by nine by eight inches, in which there is about an inch of water; the interior sides and cover of the box should be lined with blotting paper, kept saturated with water, to insure the saturation of the air. Air-dried soil yields results varying from day to day to the extent of as much as thirty to fifty per cent, nor have we any corrective formula that would reduce such observations to absolute measure. Knop’s law, that the absorption varies directly as the temperature, while applicable to low percentages of saturation, is wide of the truth when saturation is approached. The ordinary temperature of cellars will serve well in these determinations without material correction. After eight to twelve hours the earth is transferred as quickly as possible, in the cellar, to a weighed drying tube and weighed. The tube is then placed in a paraffin bath; the temperature gradually raised to 200° C. and kept there twenty to thirty minutes, a current of dry air passing continually through the tube. It is then weighed again and the loss in weight gives the hygroscopic moisture in saturated air. The reason for adopting 200° C. as the temperature for drying instead of 100° is that water will continue to come off from most soils at the latter temperature for an indefinite time, a week or more, before an approach to constancy of weight is attained; and that up to 200° only an arbitrary limit can be assigned for the expulsion of hygroscopic moisture. Moreover, the great majority of soils, especially those poor in humus, will reabsorb moisture from a saturated atmosphere to the full extent of that driven off at 200° C.