Report of the President. 19 



report of the professor in charge. An extended account is given 

 of the experiments of the department since 1892. It is shown that 

 the subjects treated have been physiological investigations, diseases 

 of plants and studies in the higher fungi. 



The State Extension work in Botany has been continued by means 

 of lectures at farmers' institutes, by horticultural meetings, by farm- 

 ers' field meetings and by exhibits at fairs and by teaching in the 

 winter courses. The exhibits made at the fairs were certain cul- 

 tivated plants of New York State, showing some of the more com- 

 mon diseases. Co-operative experiments and correspondence work 

 also took a prominent part in the department of Botany. The report 

 earnestly recommends a continuance and expansion of the extension 

 work, especially that which relates to plant diseases. The following 

 are some of the investigations conducted by the department in 

 1905-6: The prevention of the pod spot on beans, the alternaria 

 blight of ginseng, the fire blight of pears and apples, spraying 

 experiments on septoria leaf blight of the tomato, experiments on 

 the control of rust on hollyhocks and investigations into the nature 

 of root rot of peas. 



IX. The farmers' reading-course (maintained by State appro- 

 priation) enrolled 9,654 members during the past year, 2,271 of 

 whom were new members within the year. Two thousand five 

 hundred and forty-six of these farmers were organized into 125 

 reading-course clubs. An attempt has been made to extend the 

 work so that farmers who desire to secure the bulletins but are 

 unable to fill out the discussion papers may still be placed on the 

 mailing list. 



X. The report of the farmers' wives' reading-course (maintained 

 by State appropriations) shows an enrollment at the end of the 

 year of 20,284. During the year 2,077 discussion papers were 

 returned. The Winter-course in Home Economics, which is a 

 natural outgrowth of the reading-course, enrolled forty during the 

 winter of 1906. 



XI. The Bureau of Nature Study (maintained by State appro- 

 priations) reports tliat their latest records show a total of 1,506 

 clubs for junior naturalists with a membership of 30, 083. The total 

 number of letters received from the children was 20, 896. The 

 children wrote on thirty-one different topics, such as " tracks in the 

 snow," " evergreens," " snowflakes," etc. This bureau also enrolled 

 33,476 chiKlrcn in the children's gardening and junior agricultural 

 course. 



