6 The Bulletin. 



Ash. 



Bv a glance at Table I it is readily seen that the percentage of ash 

 in different parts of a mature cotton plant is quite wide, and some- 

 what variable in the same part under different fertilizer treatments. 

 Ir has also been demonstrated that the amount of ash present 

 ill anv part of the plant will be governed, to a limited extent, 

 by stage of growth, soil, etc. The largest percentages have been found 

 in the leaves, the manufactory of the plant, and the smallest in the 

 lint, one of their manufactured products. 



Reporting the average results, calculated to a dry basis, the ash 

 was found distributed as follows: 17.30 per cent in the leaves, 4.44 

 per cent in the seed, 1.64 per cent in the lint, and 5.64 per cent in 

 the stem, limbs, bolls, and roots taken together. It is very sig-nifi- 

 cant that those parts of the plant, such as leaves, stem, roots, etc., 

 which are high in inorganic materials, are the ones that are left in 

 the field to be returned to the soil, while lint and seed, the prod- 

 Ticts usually removed, are the lowest, in the aggTCgate, in those ma- 

 terials that were originally derived from the soil. 



Phosphoric Acid. 



Phosphoric acid, which is so highly essential for the nutrition 

 and proper functionating of the neuclei of the growing cells of the 

 plant, is found stored, as would naturally be expected, in largest 

 quantities proportionally in the seed, where it can he used by the 

 young growing plants before they are able to secure this constituent 

 from the medium in which the seed are germinating. The average 

 percentage of phosphoric acid, on dry basis, in the different parts of 

 the plant are: leaves, .48 per cent; seed, 1.44 per cent; lint, .11 per 

 cent; and other parts of the plant combined, .30 per cent. Strange 

 as it may seem, the largest percentage of this constituent was found 

 in the leaves, seed, and stems, bolls, roots, etc., of plants unfertilized, 

 while those receiving the fertilizer mixture highest in phosphoric 

 acid contained this constituent in the different parts of the plant in 

 the smallest percentages. 



Potash. 



In the case of potash, as with phosphoric acid, with the exception 

 of the seed, the largest percentage in all parts of the plant was pres- 

 ent in those plants gro"^\ai on unfertilized plats and the smallest in 

 the different parts of plants that were fertilized with a mixture of 

 450.9 pounds of acid phosphate, 52.6 pounds of kainit, and 141.2 

 pounds of cotton-seed meal per acre, which mixture contains triple 

 the quantity of phosphoric acid possessed by any of the other fertil- 

 izing mixtures used. As an average of all the analyses of the differ- 

 ent parts of plants fertilized differently, potash was found distributed 



