EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 251 



began blossoming in mid-September or a little later, the Rice, the Missouri 

 and the Wonderful being the last to blossom. The Michigan Favorite, Early 

 Blackeye and Missouri have long tendrils, the Whippoorwill, the Wonderful, 

 the New Era, Black, Clay, Unknown, Red Ripper, Taylor, Rice, the Down's Early 

 and Iron, have no tendrils. The Clay and Taylor were very upright; the New 

 Era, Iron, Missouri, Whippoorwill and Michigan Favorite were fairly upright 

 although the last was a little inclined to sprawl upon the ground as were the 

 Wonderful and the New Era. The Black made no attempt to stand up but was 

 very spreading and recumbent: the Unknown, the Red Ripper, the Early Blackeye, 

 Rice, the Northern Prolific and Down's Early were spreading, lodged and pros- 

 trate. 



On the 11th of September one square rod was measured on the plots devoted to 

 the following cowpeas, the yield of the square rod, weighed green, is reported 

 below: 



In the spring of 1905 a square rod of the Whippoorwill variety was harvested, 

 the leaves having fallen and disappeared, the stalks and part of the roots alone 

 remaining All of the stalks and roots on the square rod were gathered, weighed 

 and analyzed. The weight of the stalks with roots attached was 13,375 pounds. 

 The chemical analys'is of these stalks showed the following results: 



Water, 23.34 per cent. 



Ash, 8.84 " 



Nitrogen, 1.23 " 

 Potash, trace. 



Phosphoric acid, .95 " " 



A combination of this analysis and the weight on the square rod shows that 

 the stems and attached roots of cowpeas left standing during the winter returns 

 to the soil when plowed under, 26 pounds of nitrogen per acre. 



HAIRY VETCH. 



The station began the work with this crop in 1896, sowing a small area with 

 oats, 25 pounds of vetch seed and 32 pounds 'of oats being used. The oats 

 germinated so quickly and grew so rapidly that the vetches were not seen until 

 the oats were harvested. On July 6 the oats and vetches were ready to cut, the 

 oats being fully headed and ready to turn. Because the vetches had made such 

 meager growth the harvesting of the crop was delayed until July 29, when the 

 oats were fully ripe. The crop weighed, August 1, in rather daijip condition, 

 2,132 pounds to the half acre. As soon as the oats were removed the vetches 

 began to show themselves. They grew rapidly and completely covered the ground 

 before the first of September. There was a severe frost on the 19th of that 

 month which did not injure the vetches, though it stopped the growth of the 

 second crop of sorghum on the adjacent plots. The attempt was made to feed 

 the vetches to sheep but they refused to eat them until practically starved. 

 They were hurdled on the vetches but would not eat them as pasture. Part of 

 the plot was mowed and removed. On this part the vetches withstood the winter 

 and were green in the spring of 1897, but where it was left unharvested the 

 growth was so rank as to completely kill out, by smothering, all of the plants. 

 The five square rods cut on November 12 furnished 430 pounds of green forage 

 or at the rate of nearly seven tons per acre. Later in the season after the frost 

 had killed all other green stuff, the cows seemed to eat the green vetches with 

 avidity and the sheep did not altogether discard them. The vetch is a slender 

 plant, the stems usually trailing upon the ground and reaching a length of six 

 to ten feet. Under the name of Hairy Vetch a great number of different sorts 

 are sold in the market. In the spring of 1899 a large importation of vetch 

 seed, supposed to be correctly named, was made and the seed sown and tested. 



