4 REPORT OF THE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 



pointment as Agricultura] Chemist, United Provinces, and 

 on expiry of his privilege leave, resumed charge of his 

 duties as Supernumerary Agricultural Chemist at Pusa on 

 the 11th November, 1910. He has been since appointed to 

 act as Principal of the Agricultural College, Cawnpore, 

 and left Pusa to join this appointment on the 24th June, 

 1911. 



The important investigation on the water requirements 

 of crops in India, to which allusion has been made in 

 previous reports, has advanced a stage, and a second 

 memoir on the subject has been published by Br. Leather. 

 The principal conclusions arrived at are, that the nature 

 of the soil has no effect on the transpiration ratio, but pro- 

 foundly influences the rate at which water can move through 

 the soil, and hence the total weight of crop produced. 

 Also, that practically the whole of the water used by a crop 

 is obtained within the root range, some 6 to 7 feet in 

 alluvial soil, the large stores of water below this depth 

 being substantially of no service to the plant. 



Drain gauges to test the quantity and composition of 

 the subsoil drainage water from arable land were erected 

 some years ago at Cawnpore and Pusa, and the results of 

 several years' records are now in the press. They yield 

 information of the greatest interest on some of the factors 

 which must always fundamentally influence Indian agri- 

 culture, when compared with that of temperate climates. 

 Thus it has been found that the loss of water from bare 

 fallow soil is almost constant year by year in any one place, 

 and is at Pusa nearly double that at Rothamsted in Eng- 

 land. At Cawnpore, on the other hand, it is little more 

 than at Rothamsted, and this difference between Pusa and 

 Cawnpore requires to be explained but probably depends 

 on the nature of the soil. The protective influence against 

 evaporation due to the presence of a crop has been approxi- 

 mately determined for different periods of the year. The 

 amount of nitrate present in the drainage water from 

 fallow land is very much greater than at Rothamsted, 

 twice or three times as much, and nitrification occurs with 



