New York Agricultural. Experiment Station. 77 



ments with sulphur and lime. Thaxter's experimeiits were on a 

 very small scale. We concluded to repeat them on a ecale sufii- 

 ciently laa-ge to enable us to determine whether the treatment 

 is applicable to farm practice. 



EXPERIMENTS IN 1806. 



Experiments were commenced in the spring of 189G and con- 

 tinued for five years. They were all made in the vicinity of 

 Florida, N. Y., which is located in the midst of the Orange County 

 cnion district. 



In 1896 one-half acre was devoted to the expeTiments. As we 

 had, at that time, little acquaintance with the locality we were 

 obliged to depend upon others for the selection of a suitable piece 

 of land for the experiments. When the onions came up it was 

 found that only a small percentage of the plants in the check 

 plats were diseased — that is to say, the soil was not sufficiently 

 impregnated with smut to make it suitable for an experiment on 

 the treatment of the disease. Consequently, the results were of 

 so little importance that it is not worth while to discuss them 

 here. 



EXPERIMENTS IN 1897. 



For the experiments in 1897 another field was selected. This 

 time we were more fortunate in securing smut-infeisted soil, but 

 other difficulties were encountered. Some parts of the field were 

 more diseased than others. The plats could not all be arranged 

 so as to admit of close comparisons of yields. The available sup- 

 ply of air-slaked lime became exhausted before all the plats were 

 sown; and this necessitated some changes in the original plan. 

 A strong wind at time of sowing somewhat interfered with the 

 uniform distribution of the sulphur and lime. The onion maggot, 

 Anthomijia ceparum, caused unequal amounts of damage in differ- 

 ent parts of the field'. In consequence of these difficulties it is 

 best to leave out of consideration a large part of the field and 

 confine our attention to two series of plats covering a total area 

 of 18,960 square feet, or a little less than one-half acre. 



