4th. Cropping. If water, either in the form of sufficient rain or as irrigation can be had, alkali lands can be reclaimed by cropping. It is amply proved that beets and carrots, as well as other plants, such as salt-bush (_Chenopodium_), take up large quantities of alkali salts, and in the course of a few years render alkali soils available for grain. Wheat also extracts alkalies, and repeated croppings with grain will in the course of time prepare the soil for vines and trees. Bermuda grass will completely remove the alkali from soils to the depth at which the roots can penetrate, and must be recommended for the worst places. Afterwards, cropping with annual crops may be advisable before vines are finally planted on such reclaimed lands. The Australian salt-bushes, or _Chenopodium_, extract alkalies, and are besides liked by stock. They should be introduced to alkali lands and take the place of the California native salt-bushes, which are not eaten by stock. While being real desert plants, they yet require some moisture in the soil, but they could probably be grown anywhere on the alkali lands in this State where the rainfall is over three or four inches. 5th. By chemicals. The use of chemicals of various kinds in counteracting the alkali is not resorted to by our farmers as it should be. The principle upon which chemicals can be used is that obnoxious or greatly injurious alkalies may be changed into less obnoxious and less injurious salts, or even into fertilizers. The most available of these chemical compounds are gypsum (sulphate of lime) and lime (carbonate of lime). When the alkali consists mainly of carbonates, such as carbonate of sodium (sal-soda) or potassium carbonate (saleratus), in other words of the class which we have designated as class number one, the most dangerous and worst class of alkalies to combat, gypsum may be used as an antidote or rather as a means to convert these alkalies into alkalies of the second class, or the sulphates. The principle upon which this is done is to displace the sulphate in the gypsum and force it to combine with the alkali (sodium carbonate) and form sulphate of sodium (Glauber salt), an alkali belonging to the third class of alkalies, and which is twenty times less injurious to vegetation than is class number one. The change is made on the following principle, and might be thus illustrated: To the alkali in the soil (carbonate of sodium), add sulphate of lime. As soon as the mixture is made with sufficient water, a change will take place, and the substances (carbonate of sodium and sulphate of lime) will form new compounds. Thus we will get, out of those two substances, two new compounds, _viz._, carbonate of lime and sulphate of sodium. Of these, carbonate of lime is not injurious to vegetable life, and sulphate of sodium (Glauber salt) is only injurious when present in large quantities. The carbonate of lime is not soluble in water, but the sulphate of sodium is, and can consequently be