NOTES. 199 



Earl L. Moffit has resigned to accept a position with the Office of Farm Man- 

 agement of this Department. 



South Dakota Station. — Wilson Cramer, a 1914 graduate of the University of 

 Missouri, has been ajipointed assistant in animal husbandry. 



Wisconsin University and Station. — The university has accepted offers from 

 farmers of Ashland and Ilnylield counties to erect on the substation farm at 

 Ashland a building suitable for short courses and similar gatherings, at a 

 cost of $1,000. When not in use for these purposes, the building will be avail- 

 able for exix^rimontal work. 



American Society of Agronomy. — The seventh annual meeting of this society 

 was held in Washington, D. C, November 9 and 10, 19M, with a large attend- 

 ance and marked interest. . 



The address of the president, C. V. Piper, was delivered at the joint session 

 with the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, as previously 

 noted. Its title was Fundamental Principles in Agronomy, and eighteen gen- 

 eralizations were formulated and discussed. These principles were as follows: 

 (1) Every crop plant has a definite range of adaptations or reactions as re- 

 gards climate and soil; (2) tillage tends to increase yields; (3) shallow tillage 

 conserves soil moisture; (4) rate of seeding or distance of spacing effects 

 yield; (5) depth of planting affects stand and therefore may affect yield; (6) 

 time of seeding affects yield; (7) quality of seed affects yield; (8) rotative 

 cropping tends to increase or to maintain yields, single cropping tends to re- 

 duce yields; (9) mixed seedings tend to increase yields; (10) fertilizers 

 (nearly all common substances) tend to increase yields; (11) the nitrogen con- 

 tent of the soil is most cheaply maintained by keeping up the supply of humus 

 and especially by growing legumes, which alone of crop plants can utilize at- 

 mospheric nitrogen; (12) productivity is approximately maintained by feeding 

 crops to animals and returning the manure to the soil; (13) selecting the best 

 plants tends to improve the breed; (14) hybridization tends to stimulate vigor; 

 (15) plants introduced from their original to a new and similar environment 

 often tend to become aggressive; (IG) thinning buds by pruning or otherwise 

 tends to increase the size of the remaining resultant flowers and fruits; (17) 

 vegetative vigor and reproductive vigor are mutually antagonistic; and (18) 

 dwarfing of perennial plants may be secured by budding or grafting on stocks 

 not wholly congenial. 



Professor Piper pointed out that this is the first attempt to enumerate these 

 principles, although only the one relating to the use of nodule bacteria is 

 clearly the product of the last 50' years. In conclusion he referred to the 

 difliculty of drawing any but very broad generalizations because of the differing 

 adaptations of plants, and maintained that " the best hope of progress in 

 agronomy lies not in the search for broad generalizations, but in a much more 

 intensive study of the environmental relations of every important plant culti- 

 vated." 



The success with which the unit-acre platting system is being applied in 

 Texas was described by B. Youngblood and A. B. Conner. Under this system 

 the same kind of crop is assembled within the unit-acre, which may be divided 

 into plats of suitable size to accommodate the requirements of the several ex- 

 periments in progress at the time. 



C. B. Lipman discussed the solids of smelter wastes and plant growth, indi- 

 cating their value as plant food when applied in proper quantities. 



In discussing the origin of " niter spots " in certain western soils, R. Stewart 

 and W. Peterson presented data to show a mineral origin caused by water 

 movement in the soil and evaporation fi'om the surface, in distinction from the 

 bacterial origin held by some investigators. 



