106 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



The California station has a great field, unusually diverse, and 

 offering remarkable opportunity for study and for the introduction 

 of scientific methods in working out the various problems of different 

 localities and industries of the State. 



COLORADO. 



Agricultural Experiment Station, Fort Collins. 



Department of the State Agricultural College of Colorado. 



C. P. Gillette, M. S., Director. 



Several changes in the personnel and improvement in equipment 

 were made at this station during the year. Administrative diffi- 

 culties which had been arising for some time culminated in the re- 

 tirement of Director L. G. Carpenter at the close of the year and 

 the appointment of C. P. Gillette, the station entomologist, as his 

 successor. H. M. Cottrell and H. M. Bainer left the station to enter 

 other lines of work, and J. C. Summers and C. E. Vail were ap- 

 pointed to take up work under the station chemist. The new irriga- 

 tion engineering building was completed and about one-third of the 

 available space was designed for the use of the station. A number 

 of buildings to be used in poultry experiments and costing about 

 $2,000 were erected, and a model potato cellar costing about $800 

 was constructed. 



Work on most of the Adams-fund projects undertaken by the 

 station was continued during the year, and some of the results were 

 published. The project on the waters of the San Luis Valley devel- 

 oped into two important studies, i. e., nitrogen fixation and nitrifi- 

 cation in alkali soils, and the arsenic content of soils where spraying 

 is jjracticed and the relation of alkali to the arsenical poisoning of 

 fruit trees. These now constitute separate projects. Attention was 

 centered on the excess of nitrates found in certain soils popularly 

 classed as black alkali, the bacteriologist of the station cooperating. 

 The effect of excessive amounts of nitrates in soils on the quality of 

 sugar beets was studied on a 12-acre tract of beet land in the Ar- 

 kansas Valley. 



Bacteriological work under this fund was also done on a new 

 alfalfa disease, on a disease of raspberry known as yellows, and on 

 the hold-over blight in pear and apple trees. As stated in a bulletin 

 on the subject, the new alfalfa disease called stem blight, and known 

 in Colorado since 1904, is caused by a germ {Pseudomonas medi- 

 caginis) which apparently enters the plant through stems cracked 

 or split by freezing. A description of this disease was made and 



