EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS. 209 



glass cylinder, and water poured upon it. About a fourth rose 

 to the surface, after being- well agitated to rid them of air bubbles ; 

 this was taken as light seed. Salt water was then added, till 

 the half of the remaining seed rose to the surface ; this was 

 taken off as medium seed, and the portion at the bottom consti- 

 tuted the heavy seed. The two latter portions were washed to 

 rid them of brine, and all were spread on cloth over-night to dry. 

 Next morning they were sown. The heavy seed sent up a braird 

 of great strength and quantity, the light seed gave a poor sparse 

 braird, and the medium seed was intermediate. They were all 

 thinned at the same time, the light seeds scarcely requiring any 

 thinning. To my great surprise, on inspecting these a fortnight 

 later, the light seed drills were the best, the heavy ones the 

 worst, and the others intermediate, and this position was main- 

 tained during all the growing season. The reason of this was 

 not ditiicult to find. Of the heavy seed nearly every seed gTew, 

 and of course a great struggle took place for the food contained 

 in the soil, and they were not able to make such good root as 

 the few living seeds among the light portion, and what roots 

 they did make were much disturbed in thinning out their closely- 

 packed neighbours. This experiment shows the evil of thick 

 sowing. It is to be noted, however, that there was no appearance 

 of turnip fly. Had that pest appeared, there would probably 

 have been no crop at all from the light seed. 



Samples of 40 carefully selected turnips were taken from each 

 of the plots at Punrpherston before the frost set in — that is to 

 say, about four months ago — and a large proportion of these have 

 been analysed, and afford results which will be interesting and in- 

 structive when taken in connection wdth the full report of the 

 cropping at both stations; but to make any observations on them 

 in their present state would be premature, and might even be 

 misleading. 







