VIEGINIA. 213 



The Vermont station is making wise and effective use of its funds, 

 and the general conduct of its affairs reflects much credit upon its 

 management. 



VIRGINIA. 

 Virg-inia Agricultural Experiment Station, Blacksburg. 



Department of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic 



Institute. 



S. W. Fletcher, Ph. D., Director. 



The few changes on the staff of the Virginia station during the past 

 year included the appointment of E. A. Back as station entomologist. 

 For the years 1912 and 1913 the State appropriated $10,000 annually, 

 of which $5,000 is for experiments with tobacco and crops grown in 

 rotation with it and $5,000 for district substations. The substations 

 to be established with this fund, as well as the five tobacco stations 

 already in operation, are in the nature of itinerant experiment plats 

 rather than permanent substations. At each point from 5 to 25 acres 

 of land are leased for a short term of years, and when satisfactory 

 results have been secured the work is transferred to other sections of 

 the State and to other problems. At the district substations one-half 

 of the appropriation will be used for experiment orchards and one- 

 half for experiments with field croj)S. 



General progress was made in the Adams fund projects of the sta- 

 tion during the year, and some of this work was completed. The 

 study of the effects of care, feed, and environment on bovine tuber- 

 culosis was concluded after some work had been done with hogs to 

 determine the liability of infection from feeding milk from tubercu- 

 lous animals, the sweepings from their mangers, and through other 

 means of exposure. 



The study of fruit-bud formation was mainly along the line of 

 working out methods. About 75 dwarf trees planted in cylinders 

 have been jDrovided for the study. The project on apple breeding was 

 retarded to some extent during the year by a failure of the apple crop. 

 For the purposes of this work, about 2,000 seedlings were on hand to 

 be budded on dwarf stock. 



In studying the fixation of phosphoric acid by soils, stress was laid 

 on the form in which the phosphoric acid not used by the crop of one 

 season remains in the soil, and on the effect of the fixation of this 

 element by iron and aluminum hyclroxid. The problem was also 

 studied in a series of plats to correlate the plant growth with the 

 amount of soluble salts. From field plat work in this connection, a 

 large amount of material was obtained for analvsis, and nitrate deter- 

 minations were made on all soil samples. 



The grazing project was continued in cooperation with this depart- 

 ment. Analyses or estimates of the plats under different treatment 



