440 ANNUAL RErORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Making and utilizing iiay. — Experimental work in the artificial 

 curing of hay has progressed s<:> satisfactorily that those in charge 

 and the farmers of the locality who have had a chance to observe are 

 convinced of its practicability on the farm. A new drier is to be 

 constructed which will embody such improvements as experience has 

 found to be necessary, and a special effort will be made to ascertain 

 the cost of curing hay by artificial means. 



Utilizing and maintaining pastures. — The cooperative work be- 

 gun last year in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York for devising 

 means of renovating worn-out pastures has been continued as pre- 

 viously outlined, with promise of practical results. 



Sugar-beet growing. — Cooperative studies of systems of farming 

 wherein sugar beets enter as a commercial product have been made in 

 many of the Western States. 



Clearing and utilizing logged-off lands. — An attempt will be 

 made to gather data as to the relative cost and difference in methods 

 of clearing land having various types of soil and different kinds of 

 timber. It is planned to continue this work during the coming year 

 in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 



Relation of farm practice to yields. — That crop yields are af- 

 fected by the type of farming practiced is well known. Very little 

 effort has been made to systematize the scattered data that may be 

 available. For the past seven years experimental work has been con- 

 ducted in cooperation with the Maryland and Kentucky stations, the 

 object being to secure experimental data on this subject which might 

 serve as a check on the figures that are rapidly accumulating as a 

 result of the study of farm practice. The work at the Maryland sta- 

 tion was discontinued, but it will be continued in Kentucky. The 

 tabulation and analysis of the figures obtained from actual practice 

 has been started and will be pushed during the coming year. 



Geographic factors. — A study of the relations existing between the 

 distribution of farm enterprises and such geographic factors as sea- 

 sonal rainfall, the length of the growing season, the dates of the last 

 frost in spring and the first frost in the fall, topography, elevation, 

 latitude, geological formation, and character of soil is being made. 



Cactus investigations. — A special effort has been made to concen- 

 trate the collections of cacti that have accumulated in southern Texas 

 and California, in order that they may be more readily available for 

 breeding purposes. Culture tests have been continued with the spiny 

 native forms in southern Texas. It has been demonstrated that these 

 plants can be successfully grown as forage and that they yield large 

 crops under proper cultivation. Another large public distribution 

 of eight varieties of spineless forms was made in the spring of 1912, 

 about 16 tons of cuttings being sent out. 



Range investigations. — Attention has been directed to the pro- 

 duction of winter forage on the sheep ranges of the Southwest, the 

 relative conditions governing the grazing of sheep and cattle and the 

 methods of management of the range by different ranchmen in vari- 

 ous sections. The Santa Rita Reserve in Arizona is beginning to give 

 valuable data regarding the reestablishment of depleted ranges. At 

 the request of the Secretary of Agriculture a large range reserve has 



