6 



fill to the agriculturists of the State. The farmers, as well, by ' 

 reason of personal association with College representativ^es, come to 

 appreciate more fully what the College can do for them and where 

 to go for help when difficult problems arise. 



The above considerations have led the College of 

 Co-opera- Agriculture to arrange for co-operative experiments 

 tive expepi- with fertiHzers and with a number of farm crops 

 merits of importance in the State. The effort has been to 

 arrang'ed. select those questions for investigation that will be 

 of practical value to large numbers of farmers and 

 to arrange them in such simple form as to be easy of execution. 

 The plan is to arrange experiments along a number of different lines 

 and to let each experimenter choose that in which he is most inter- 

 ested or which will be of the most practical value to him. It is 

 intended that a College representative shall visit the experimenters 

 during the season, so far as time and opportunity shall permit, but 

 it is not intended to limit the number of experimenters to those who 

 probably can be visited. It is hoped that a large number of farmers 

 will avail themselves of this opportunity to get help in regard to 

 many questions that have to do directly with the success or failure 

 of their own farm operations. 



Soil Tests with Fertilizers. 



Many thousands of dollars are annually paid by the farmers of 

 Xew York for commercial fertilizers. In most cases the farmer 

 buys some brand of complete fertilizer without any definite knowl- 

 edge that it supplies most cheaply and abundantly the element of 

 plant-food most deficient in his soil, or that he is not paying for 

 expensive materials that are already abundant. 



The Colleo^e desires to encourao:e the farmers of the State to 

 make tests of various fertilizing material on their soil to learn which, 

 if an}', or what combinations, will produce profitable results. Dur- 

 ing the past four years, in order to encourage this work, the College 

 has furnished many sets of experimental fertilizers to farmers, has 

 instructed them as to manner of conducting the experiment and in 

 most cases has inspected the work during the season. A partial 



520 



