EXPERIMENT STATION NOTES. 



Arizona Station. — The governing board as at present organized includes Merrill 

 P. Freeman, ex officio, president, Tucson ; Seliin M. Franklin, Ph. B., Tucson; George 

 W. Cheney, Tombstone; Eobert T. Millar, Tucson; F. H. Goodwin, Tucson; J. A. 

 Jones, Globe; W. R. Stone, Florence ; Nathan O. Murphj', Phceuix ; Johu M. Ormsby, 

 secretary, Tucson. The station staff is composed of Frank A. GuUey, M. S., director ; 

 Charles B. Collingwood, B. S., chemist; Fe'rdinand Brandt, horticulturist. 



California Station. — C. H. Shiun has been appointed inspector of stations, vice 

 W. G. Klee. K. McLennan, heretofore foreman at the central station, has been 

 appointed foreman of the South California Station near Pomona. The buildings 

 for the South California Station are nearly completed and planting will soon begin 

 there. In addition to the ordinary vintage work of the central station, a series of 

 nitrogen determinations of grape musts from different localities is in progress. 

 Musts from the same and different varieties will be compared, with a view to finding 

 explanations of the great differences in the keeping qualities of wines. Great local 

 differences have already become apparent. 



There is also in progress a series of determinations of the oil content of about 

 twenty different varieties of olives now growing in the State, together with prac- 

 tical tests of oil making therefrom. The oil from the pits and pulp is deterujiued 

 separately, in order to deduce therefrom practical precepts in regard to the methods of 

 oil making, it being well known that the ordinary ("Mission ") olive of the Pacific 

 coast rarely contains any kernels in its seeds. Verifications of commercial tests of 

 these oils seem to show very material differences in the standards to be accepted for 

 California oils as compared with Italian and French, especially as regards the iodine 

 test. Egyptian date-palms received from the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture are to be tested at the substations at Pomona and Tulare. 



Connecticut State Station. — A. W. Ogden, Ph. B., has been appointed one of 

 the chemists of the station, vice R. S. Cnrtiss, Ph. B. Dr. Roland Thaxter has an- 

 nounced the discovery of an organism, a fungus apparently undescribed, which causes 

 the deep form of " potato scab " so common and destructive in New England, and has 

 produced the disease on sound potatoes by inoculation from pure cultures under test 

 conditions. S. W. Johnson and T. B. Osborne have found that Wagner's modifica- 

 tion of Sonnenschein's method for determining phosphoric acid, which has been 

 adopted essentially by the United States Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, 

 while entirely accurate for ordinary phosphates containing but little iron and alu- 

 mina, gives incorrect and too high results when applied to Thomas slag, Keystone 

 concentrated phosphate. Grand Cayman's rock, and similar aluminous and ferrugi- 

 nous phosphates. 



Dr. Osborne has made an extended study of the proteids of the oat kernel. His 

 results, in brief, are as follows : (1) The alcohol-soluble body first observed by Norton 

 has not the composition assigned to it by Kreusler and Ritthausen, but contains 

 1.3 per cent less nitrogen than given by these authors, agreeing more nearly with 

 Ritthauseu's mucedin than with his gliadin. ' (2) When oats are first treated with 

 water or 10 per cent solution of common salt before extraction with alcohol, the 

 alcohol-soluble proteid undergoes alteration, and a body of different composition and 

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