EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 307 



Kow 5 — Seeds wet with weak gum arable mucilage aud rolled iu dry 

 spores, no disinfecting treatment. 



Row G — Seeds not treated, but the smut spores scattered on the sur- 

 face of the soil and slightly worked in. 



Ivow 7 — Like row 1; control. 



Kow 8 — Dry seed rolled in dry spores aud subsequently treated for 

 two hours with formaldehyde solution (one j3art of ''40%" 

 formaldehyde solution in 500 parts water). 



Row — Wet seed rolled in dry spores and disinfected as in 8. 



Kow 10 — Like row 1; control. 



As stated above each row produced approximately 100 plants, al- 

 though this could not be determined with absolute accuracy because of 

 the fact that the plants were in some cases so closely grown together 

 that it could not be told whether a certain cluster of culms represented 

 one or two plants. The smutted plants, however, mostly had but one or 

 two culms and so were counted with accuracy. In the following table 

 the number of smutted plants in each row is given and the percentage 

 of such plants, assuming the total number of plants in each row to be 

 100. 



Row 1 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted (Control) 



Row 2 — Smutted plants 11, percentage plants smutted 11 



Row 3 — Smutted plants 17, percentage plants smutted 17 



Row 4 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted (Control) 



Row 5 — Smutted jjlants 25, ijercentage plants smutted 25 



Row 6 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted 



Row 7 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted (Control) 



Row 8 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted 



Row 9 — Smutted plants 0, percentage plants smutted 



Row 10 — Smutted plants 1, percentage plants smutted 1 (Control) 



These experiments demonstrate that the infection takes place at germi- 

 nation or very shortly afterwards and furthermore that formablehj'de 

 treatment of the seed such as is practiced for oat smut or bunt of wheat 

 will control this disease .also. 



