THE flow of heat away from buried electric cables, steam pipes, etc., is directly proportional to the conductivity of the surrounding soil. It follows that a knowledge of soil conductivities is necessary to the engineer. Unfortunately, there are almost as many values of soil conductivity as there have been experimenters in this field. Austin1 suggests that the lack of consistency has been inevitable due to the lack of standardization of apparatus and probably even more so to the loose specification of the soil sample. The composition of soil varies enormously, and so also does the water content and the tightness of the packing, yet these quantities must have an immediate bearing upon the value of the conductivity.