DEPARTMENT OF SOIL INVESTIGATION. 



The report of the Department of Soil Investigation, the work 

 of which is ahnost entirely experimental, is for the Federal tisc;;) 

 year ended June 30, 1908. 



I. TEACHING. 



As in the previous year, instruction has been confined to gradu- 

 ate students of whom there were seven. Six of these took their 

 major subjects in this laboratory. All were, or are now, candi- 

 dates for the Ph. D. degree. Only in exceptional cases is it con- 

 sidered desirable to permit a student to take a minor subject in this 

 laboratory, as it does not seem possible for the average student 

 satisfactorily to conduct research in more than his major subject,, 

 unless the major and minor subjects are. related. 



The students taking work in this laboratory were graduates of 

 the following colleges : Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Agricultural 

 College of North Carolina, Iowa Agricultural College, Wesleyan 

 University (Middletown, Conn.), Utah Agricultural College, Uni- 

 versity of Illinois, Cornell University. Two of the number re- 

 ceived the Ph.D. degree in June. One of these now occupies the 

 chair of Agronomy in the Mississippi Agricultural College, the 

 other is Assistant Professor of Agronomy in the New Mexico Ag- 

 ricultural College. 



II. INVESTIGATION. 



The investigations of the department are conducted in (i) the 

 experiment field on the University farm, (2) a series of concrete 

 tanks also in the farm, (3) a small glass house, (4) the laboratory. 



The experiment field is one not naturally well adapted to experi- 

 ments with soil, as the character of the soil is far from uniform, 

 and the topography does not easily permit of division into plats. 

 This has led us to make a careful study of methods of laying out 

 plats with a view to reducing to a minimum the errors arising from 

 lack of uniformity. The subject was presented by the writer in 

 his lectures to the Graduate School in 1908^ and since has been 

 taken up by the American Society of Agronomy and has been given 

 an important place in proceedings of that society. Among the pre- 

 cautions, we have adopted the use of very small plats of land with 



