138 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



The experiments with sorghum as a sugar-producing plant 

 forever settled the fact that no known variety of it can be 

 profitably employed for that purpose, unless chemical science 

 can discover a law by which glucose can be changed to cane- 

 sugar. 



The experiments in feeding different kinds of fruit-bear- 

 ing plants with special chemical elements, to improve the 

 quantity and quality of their products, have been continued 

 to date ; and a synopsis of their progress may be found in the 

 annexed report of Professor Goessmann on the condition of 

 the chemical department. The investigations into the physi- 

 cal deportment of certain soils to temperature and water, 

 and its influence on plant-growth, were continued in 1879, 

 and to a limited extent in 1880. The rainfall in the former 

 year, at the point where the lysimeter is located, during the 

 months from April to November, was 22.3 inches, which was 

 equivalent to 608,430 gallons per acre. The percolation was 

 89.520 gallons per acre ; or, of the rainfall, 14.71 per cent 

 percolated, and 85.29 per cent evaporated. In the same 

 months of 1880 the rainfall was 19.11 inches, equivalent to 

 543,620 gallons per acre. Of this, 4.75 per cent, or 25,800 

 gallons, percolated, and 95.25 per cent, or 517,820 gallons, 

 evaporated. There were 64,810 gallons more water to the 

 acre in 1879 than in 1880 ; but the percolation was more than 

 three times as much in the former as in the latter year. The 

 fall of rain in 1880 was generally small in each storm, evenl}' 

 distributed, and with no percolation in four months of the 

 six named. In 1879 the rainfall of single storms was very 

 large, with more than a corresponding amount of percolation. 

 In 1879 a record was kept of the temperature of dry gravel 

 and wet peat soil in natural position, at the surface and five 

 inches in depth, at five A.m. and half past two P.M., from 

 April to October. The average temperature of the whole 

 surface soil of five inches in depth, day and niglit for the 

 Avhole time, was found to be, for gravel, 70.2^, and peat, 

 66.86° ; a result that corroborates and sustains the conclu- 

 sions of the much smaller number of observations made in 

 1878, to which reference is made. 



Early in the year a vacancy occurred in the board of 

 trustees by the resignation of Hon. Richard Goodman of 

 Lenox. It was filled at a meeting in June by the election 



