The department has been called upon to give specific advice concerning the installation of drainage systems where the parties were willing to bear the expenses in connection therewith, and in a number of other cases more specific assistance could not be given because of our lack of means to meet the situation. Specific effort is being made to get in touch with all sources of tile and other drainage materials available for New York and to promote uniformly good material upon a comparable basis of cost.

(c) Cooperative Experiments.- Cooperative experiments with crainage, tillage, fertilizers and manures have been offered and some work has been undertaken by about a dozen persons. An essential element to the success of this movement - a visit to each experiment at least once during the season by a person from the Station has been utterly impossible because of lack of funds. (d) Fertilizer Experiments.— Fertilizer experiments with onions on muck soil have been continued on the plots established at Breeze Hill, Orange county, in 1908, at which time some striking results were obtained. The yields for 1909 are not yet available but promise even greater differences from the treatments. This is a type of work that it is felt should be prosecuted at several points on each important soil type in the state.

(e) Lime.— Effort has been made to get in touch with all sources of lime for agricultural purposes for New York and to have at hand for inquiries information as to its quantity, convenience and cost.

(f) Lectures.-A number of lectures were given during the year by members of the staff on topics relating to the soil, before gatherings of farmers in various parts of the state. The necessity for putting the teaching work of the department first has greatly limited the number of requests for such lectures which could be accepted.

(g) Demonstrations and Educational Propaganda.- The department will have made exhibits at five agricultural fairs, including the State Fair. The department also participated in the R. W. and O. Farm train and in the Farmers' Week program in February.

(h) Correspondence. The correspondence of the department has grown very much during the past year and hundreds of letters have been written in reply to inquiries concerning soil problems. This is becoming a very considerable item in the department's activities and, we feel, one which merits the most careful attention. E. O. FIPPIN,

Assistant Professor of Soils, in Charge of Department.

DEPARTMENT OF SOIL INVESTIGATION.

The report of the Department of Soil Investigation, the work of which is almost entirely experimental, is for the Federal fiscai year ended June 30, 1908.

I. TEACHING.

As in the previous year, instruction has been confined to graduate students of whom there were seven. Six of these took their major subjects in this laboratory. All were, or are now, candidates for the Ph. D. degree. Only in exceptional cases is it considered desirable to permit a student to take a minor subject in this laboratory, as it does not seem possible for the average student satisfactorily to conduct research in more than his major subject, unless the major and minor subjects are related.

The students taking work in this laboratory were graduates of the following colleges: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Agricultural College of North Carolina, Iowa Agricultural College, Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.), Utah Agricultural College, University of Illinois, Cornell University. Two of the number received the Ph.D. degree in June. One of these now occupies the chair of Agronomy in the Mississippi Agricultural College, the other is Assistant Professor of Agronomy in the New Mexico Agricultural College.

II. INVESTIGATION.

The investigations of the department are conducted in (1) the experiment field on the University farm, (2) a series of concrete tanks also in the farm, (3) a small glass house, (4) the laboratory.

The experiment field is one not naturally well adapted to experiments with soil, as the character of the soil is far from uniform, and the topography does not easily permit of division into plats. This has led us to make a careful study of methods of laying out plats with a view to reducing to a minimum the errors arising from lack of uniformity. The subject was presented by the writer in his lectures to the Graduate School in 1908, and since has been taken up by the American Society of Agronomy and has been given. an important place in proceedings of that society. Among the precautions, we have adopted the use of very small plats of land with

duplicate or triplicate plats arranged in series. The agitation of this subject among station workers promises to bring about improvement in the conduct of field experiments, which experiments have been for years among the least accurate of the forms of experiment station activity.

The concrete tanks for soil experiments have been completed and are now in use. They are intended to furnish receptacles for bodies of soil of sufficient size to produce plants in a normal manner under approximately field conditions, and yet afford opportunity for measuring a large number of the factors affecting plant growth. The construction is of concrete, but the tanks will be lined.

Each tank is four feet two inches square with a maximum vertical depth of four feet six inches and a minimum depth of four feet. There are twenty-four tanks placed in two rows of twelve tanks each. Between the rows of tanks is a tunnel, the bottom of which is ten feet below the top of the tanks. The tunnel is six feet wide. From the lowest point in each tank is an outlet tube two inches in diameter and tin lined. It is made large enough to permit of easy cleaning and has no bends in it. A piston runs through the tube to within four inches of the upper end. Between the perforated head of the piston and the soil, glass wool is to be inserted. The piston can be withdrawn if it is desired to clean the tube.

Drainage water from each tank will be caught in a receptacle in the tunnel. The lining in the tanks will prevent any soluble material in the concrete from appearing in the drainage water. A constant water table at any depth may be maintained by raising the rubber tube leading from the outlet tube to a corresponding point below the surface of the soil in the tank.

The tanks as described will each contain between three and four tons of soil, and the surface will constitute approximately .0004 0£ an acre. They are built with special reference to durability, so that it will be possible to plan for experiments to extend over a long period. The quantity of soil contained is not too large to allow of accuracy in sampling and yet is sufficiently large to closely resemble field conditions, which is not true of the quantity contained in pots. No covering is to be placed over the tanks, but in every way natural conditions are to be permitted. The top soil and the subsoi will be placed in their relative positions. It is expected that the rainfall will be sufficient to meet the needs of the crops, but if plants suffer during periods of drought they can be watered artificially.

Any desired type of soil may be used, which is not possible with ordinary field experiments. It is also possible to make a comparison of different soil types under any desired conditions, which may be very serviceable in ascertaining the effect of those properties differentiating these types upon certain factors in soil productiveness. The chief feature of the plan is that of keeping accurate records of the factors affecting plant growth without producing artificial conditions.

The tube leading from the bottom of the tank is designed to carry off the drainage water into a receptacle which will permit. the quantity to be measured and its constituents to be determined. Since the work of constructing these tanks was begun, the installation of similar apparatus has been commenced by two other experiment stations.

The following is an outline of the projects under investigation, with comments on the nature and advancement of the work. The first four projects are the old work begun by the Department of Agronomy, and projects 8 to 14 are new work begun in 1909.

Project 1. Fertilizer experiments with timothy. To ascertain the best fertilizer treatment on the soil under experimentation for a rotation consisting of timothy, corn, oats and wheat. In 1908 the experiment was extended to include a comparison of the practice of fertilizing for the grain crops alone, as is usually done, with that of fertilizing for timothy alone.

Project 2. Effect of weeds on corn.- The object is to ascertain why weeds are injurious; whether the injury is due entirely to the removal of moisture or other food materials, or to some other cause.

Field experiments on this may be discontinued after the present summer if the results this year confirm those of the past two seasons, which indicate that either one or both of the two causes first, mentioned are responsible for at least a large part of the effect, and that if there is any other source of injury it is of very minor. importance.

Project 3. Use of lime and inocculation for alfalfa.- This was merely a field experiment designed to test in a practical way some of the cultures of Pseudomonas radiccola dispensed for the purpose of inocculation alfalfa land. The results are similar to most of those reported by a number of experiment stations, and there seems to be no reason for publishing them.

Project 4. Examination of certain properties of an unproductive soil. We have shown that an accompanying condition of the lessened productiveness is deflocculation of the soil aggregates. The

purpose of the investigation now is to ascertain (1) the cause or causes of deflocculation; (2) the manner in which deflocculation affects the growth of plants.

Project 5. Effect of soil mixture and temperature upon the availability and utilization of plant nutrients in the soil. It is desired to ascertain to what extent the moisture supply affects not only the plant growth, but especially the proportions in which the severa! nutrients are absorbed, how this is influenced by changes in the moisture content at different stages in the life of the plant and by changes in the density of the nutrient solution at different stages. As temperature is an importan: factor in solubility it must be controlled. This may have a practical application in irrigation and in the use of fertilizers.

Project 6. Influence of certain atmospheric conditions on the absorption of mineral nutrients by plants.-Owing to the delay in obtaining a glass house in which the atmospheric conditions can be controlled, this experiment has not been continued.

Project 7. The character and concentration of the aqueous extract of the soil under different methods of treatment.- This is really a part of project 5 and will no longer be reported as a separate investigation.

Project 8. Influence of different methods of soil treatment on the loss of calcium in drainage water.— The decrease in basicity which is a constantly increasing difficulty in soils of humid regions is due largely to the loss of calcium salts from the soil. The rate of loss is possibly influenced by ordinary agricultural practices, as, for example, clean cultivation, use of fertilizers leaving acid residues in the soil, etc. It is intended to investigate this in the soil tanks.

Project 9. The loss of potassium and other substances occasioned by manuring with lime. The extensive use of lime necessitated by the acid condition of large areas of soil may have a secondary effect, and by replacing other bases in the polysilicates may result in a considerable loss of potassium in the drainage water. Whether this is the case, and if so, how it may be ameliorated, is the purpose of this investigation.

Project 10. Extent to which soils under field conditions are renewed by accession of lower soil to the plowed portion.- By comparing productiveness, composition, and certain properties of similar soils cropped for a long period of years in the soil tanks and in the field it is hoped to discover to what extent the upper layers. of soil gain material either by the upward movement in solution