December 9, 1911 



II (• RT I C D I.T I I; E 



805 



U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



SYNOPSIS OF THE SECRETARY'S REPORT. 



The Fifteenth Annual Report ol 

 the Secretary oi Agriculture, made 

 public this week, begins with a si 

 of short paragraphs of much national 

 importance. A few of them are re- 

 printed below: 



Brief Comments. 



Would it be asking too much of our 

 universities to have them educate 

 more plant pathologists and road en- 

 gineers? 



Every country in the world that has 

 diseased plants that can not be sold 

 at home can ship them to us. This re- 

 sults in great loss. The chestnut di- 

 sease here is an illustration. 



Ater years of experimentation we 

 find we can grow Egyptian cotton in 

 Southern California and bulbs in the 

 State of Washington. 



The finest dates from the Sahara 

 Desert succeed in our Southwest. 



No seed is sent out from this depart- 

 ment without being tested for germi- 

 nation condition. 



The schools want more of our pub- 

 lications than we have to give them. 



The day is not far distant when we 

 will cease to import potash. 



A serious pest in the South is the 

 crayfish; carbon bisulphid is a sure 

 remedy. 



We are sending explorers to the 

 ends of the earth for new plants — and 

 getting them. 



The phosphates are abundant in our 

 country for all possible uses. Florida, 

 Kentucky, Tennessee, and Idaho may 

 be mentioned as depositories. 



If good roads from the producer to 

 the consumer were general, the bene- 

 fits to both would be considerable. 



When a foreign insect invades, our 

 scientists seek its enemy where it 

 came from. The natural enemy of 

 the boll weevil was an ant that could 

 aot endure our winters, but the na- 

 tive ant is getting busy. 



The experiment stations of the sev- 

 eral states are doing better work each 

 succeeding year, the scientists are ma- 

 turing, and the people are appreciat- 

 ing. 



• Our systems of renting land are 

 faulty and result in soil robbing; 

 •where the renter can not provide 

 domestic animals, the owner should 

 arrange to furnish them, so that rota- 

 tion of crops may be had, and hay and 

 grains may be fed on the farm. 



Irrigation will bring maximum crops 

 •while the land is new and full of 

 plant food; but where the crops are 

 sold year by year irrigation will not 

 of itself assure good results. 



Alaska will some day provide farm- 

 ers in lower latitudes with grain seeds 

 superior to what they can grow at 

 home. 



The corn crop is moving northward 

 hy seed selection. 



Save all the liquid fertilizers on the 

 farm, in cisterns, to be applied where 

 crops are to grow; this will recover 

 the greatest farm waste of our times. 



There is great promise in the fact 

 that whole classes of graduates of 

 agricultural colleges go back to the 

 farms, having learned how to make 

 them profitable. 



Our foresti rs ai e lean -.peri- 



nients how to reforest 30, acres in 



a year; 10 times as much must be 

 planted annually to cover all the bar.' 

 acres in a generation. It will be done. 



The potato crop of 282,000,000 bushels 

 is about 90 per cent of the a- 

 production, but the farm price lias in- 

 creased to such an extent that the 

 ■ total value of the crop is the highest 

 of record and amounts to $213,000,000. 



Forest Pathology. 



On account of their important rela- 

 tion to reforestation, damping off and 

 other diseases of forest-tree seedlings 

 have received special attention. The 

 results of the past season's work have 

 confirmed the previous reports of abso- 

 lute success in controlling the serious 

 "blight" of coniferous seedlings by 

 slight and perfectly practical^ 

 in the management of water supply and 

 shade. For two seasons past the use 

 of sulphuric acid in preventing the 

 damping-off of coniferous seedlings in 

 the Forest Service nursery at Halsey, 

 Nebr., has been successful. If these 

 results are confirmed by work in other 

 localities and other years, damping-off 

 so far as coniferous seedlings are con- 

 cerned, will cease to be an uncontrol- 

 lable factor in reforestation. The use 

 of sulphuric acid as a soil fungicide or- 

 iginated in this department, as re- 

 ported in previous publications. 



It is unfortunate that at this time, 

 when interest in reforestation is at its 

 height, we should knowingly import a 

 destructive European nursery disease. 

 Yet this appears to be the case. The 

 white-pine blister rust, referred to in 

 previous reports, is unquestionably 

 still being imported. All importations 

 that could be located have been In- 

 spected and all visibly diseased trees 

 destroyed, but there are no means of 

 locating all importations. The import- 

 ation of white-pine seedlings should be 

 flatly prohibited, as the damage which 

 this disease can do, and probably will 

 do, if once established in America, is 

 •out of all proportion to the value of all 

 white-pine seedlings ever imported or 

 ever likely to be. 



Diseases of Fruits. 



Apple spraying experiments and 

 demonstrations were conducted in sev- 

 eral widely separated districts, and It 

 was again shown that lime-sulphur 

 properly diluted is a more satisfactory 

 fungicide for certain apple diseases 

 than Bordeaux mixture. However, 

 owing to the severe weather con- 

 ditions of the season, the combination 

 of lime-sulphur and arsenate of lead 

 caused considerable burning of the 

 fruit in a few orchards, but this 

 trouble was not so serious as to dis- 

 courage the use of this spray. 



The grape anthracnose is very de- 

 structive to both fruit and vine. Cer- 

 tain varieties in some localities are at- 

 tacked every year by this disease. 

 The department has demonstrated the 

 past season that this malady can be 

 satisfactorily controlled by proper 

 spraying of the vines while in a dor- 

 mant condition. Further confirmation 

 of previous results in the control of 

 black-rot of the grape has also been 



obtained. Very pron ^ults have 



been secured in controlling the anth- 

 racnose of the cranberry, which has 

 nnd to be a prevalent cause of 

 loss in some cranberry districts. 

 Considerable progress has also been 

 made in the study and control of other 

 small-fruit diseases. 



Seed-Testing Laboratories. 



On account of the provision for seed 

 ' L- made by State laws in North 

 Carolina and Nebraska, co-operation 

 with these states has been discon- 

 tinued, and two new laboratories are 

 opened in connection with the 

 ultural experiment stations in 

 California and Louisiana, the labora- 

 tories in Missouri, Oregon and Indiana 

 Dg continued. 



Hairy-vetch seed, which has this 

 year for the first time been collected 

 for examination for adulterants, was 

 frequently found to contain seed of 

 cultivated varieties of spring vetch, 

 the latter generally being useless for 

 fall sowing on account of winterkill- 

 ing. An examination Of the hairy- 

 vetch seed-growing section of north- 

 ern Germany and northwestern Russia 

 shows that on account of the differ- 

 ence in time of ripening it is impos- 

 sible to harvest seed of cultivated 

 forms of spring vetch and hairy vetch 

 together, the former being used as an 

 adulterant. The Vicia villosa seed 

 originating in the Baltic Provinces 

 occurs as a volunteer in winter rye 

 and is separated as cleanings from the 

 rye. 



Congressional Seed Distribution. 



Seeds and plants were distributed 

 upon congressional order as in former 

 years. Between six and seven hun- 

 dred tons of vegetables and flower 

 seeds, put up in approximately 60,000,- 

 000 packets, were distributed the past 

 season. Of this quantity about 10 per 

 cent was flower seed and 90 per cent 

 vegetable seed. Approximately one- 

 third of the- total quantity was pro- 

 cured from surplus stocks, and the re- 

 mainder was grown under contract for 

 the. department during the current sea- 

 son. In every case seed was secured 

 on competitive bids, and no seed was 

 accepted for distribution unless it was 

 found after repeated tests to he of sat- 

 isfactory purity and vitality. Every 

 lot of seed is tested for germination 

 two or more times before and ; 

 shipment, and a sample of each lot is 

 grown on the trial grounds of the de- 

 partment under the direct supervision 

 of expert horticulturists to deterniim' 

 its trueness to type. Many thousand 

 pounds of vegetable and flower seeds 

 which do not meet the requirements of 

 the department are rejected every 

 year and returned to the seedsmen by 

 whom they were shipped. Where 

 seeds are contracted to be grown for 

 the department the fields are inspect- 

 ed at the proper season by specialists, 

 who see that the plants are uniformly 

 true to type and that a proper system 

 of roguing out variations and mixtures 

 is followed. This system has resulted 

 in steady improvement in the quality 

 eds distributed by the department, 

 as shown by the results obtained on 

 the trial grounds and by hundreds of 



