58 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



being charted and tabulated, a summary covering the weather condi- 

 tions throughout the corn and wheat regions is telegraphed to 18 

 different points and there published in the form of daily bulletins, 

 besides being given to the press. 



COTTON REGION SERVICE. 



This service covers the 11 principal cotton States, and consists of 

 1 region center and 15 district centers, and has 166 special stations. 

 Daily records of temperature and rainfall are telegraphed from these 

 special stations in each district to the district center, and at these 

 centers and 11 other points daily bulletins are published, with an 

 issue of 1,736 copies. Weekly bulletins and charts giving the tem- 

 perature and rainfall over the cotton States are also published at 

 New Orleans. This service was expanded during the spring of 1916 

 by the extension into the new cotton-growing district in western 

 Texas and other uncovered fields. Preliminary work was started 

 to reorganize this service along State lines, but it was thought best 

 to delay the change until the season of 1917. 



SUGAR AND RICE REGION SERVICE. 



This service covers the rice-growing region of Texas and Louis- 

 iana, and the sugar district of the Southern States. No material 

 change was made during the year just ended. However, correspond- 

 ence has been under way looking to the extension of the rice-region 

 service. 



SPECIAL FRUIT REGION SERVICE. 



This service consists of several separate branches, consisting of the 

 cranberry service in eastern Massachusetts and southern Wisconsin, 

 investigations into temperature conditions at various elevations in 

 the mountains in western North Carolina and in the Salt River Val- 

 ley in Arizona, and special forecasts and warnings for the benefit of 

 fruit men who are protecting their orchard crops from spring frosts 

 in Ohio, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Cali 

 fornia. This service has been expanded during the year by the estab- 

 lishment of seven new stations in the grape and peach-growing dis- 

 trict of northern Ohio, by the extension of the special cranberry serv- 

 ice in the Shell Lake district of southern Wisconsin, and by the detail 

 of trained men for special duty in the fruit district in the Hood River 

 Valley in Oregon and the Gunnison Valley in Colorado. These men 

 studied the local situation and gave expert information to the fruit 

 growers as to the temperature to be expected, and whether it would 

 probably be necessary to prepare for lighting the fires in the or- 

 chards. These men proved to be of unusual benefit to the orchard 

 growers in these valleys, and there is already a demand for the ex- 

 tension of this service into other districts where fruit is intensively 

 grown and arrangements are made for protection of the orchards by 

 heating. In Ohio this warning service is given by long-distance tele- 

 phone from the section center at Columbus with considerable suc- 

 cess, by a careful study of the temperature and weather records in 

 each orchard where heating is carried on. 



