192 
New York Agricultural Experiment Station, at Geneva, demonstrated that 
oat smut is not readily visible to the unpracticed eye unless ten or 
more per cent. of the crop is affected. The smutted stalks are, to a large 
extent, considerably shorter than the sound stalks, and can not usually be 
seen except upon close examination of the field. And again, most of the 
smutted masses are blown away by harvest time and only bare stalks 
remain, leaving nothing conspicuous to indicate the amount of damage 
done. 
Dr. Arthur found nine and one-half per cent. of smutted plants in 
fields at the Geneva Station in which the presence of smut could scarcely 
be detected without close examination. In the third annual report of 
the New York Experiment Station he remarks in this connection: ‘The 
appearance of smut as one passed through the fields was no greater than 
is usually to be seen in any part of the country, * * * and the result 
of the count * * * is as much a surprise to the writer as it will doubt- 
less be to others.” 
EE. S. Goff, of the Wisconsin Experiment Station, estimated the loss 
from oat smut in that State, in 1896, at about nine per cent. 
Jowman and Burnett, of the Iowa Experiment Station, found, in 1907, 
an average of seven and nine-thenths per cent. of smutted heads in twenty 
fields examined. 
Kellerman and Swingle estimated, in 1888S and 1889, that Kansas lost 
annually over eleven per cent. of the oat crop from smut. 
In bulletin No. 37, of the Ohio Experiment Station, J. F. Hickman 
says: “In passing through one of our oat fields last summer I observed 
what seemed to be a smutted head here and there, but upon careful ex- 
amination I found more than seven per cent. of this variety smutted.” 
In order to demonstrate the importance and the value of the formal- 
dehyde treatment as effectively as possible the county agents in a humber 
of counties made arrangements with some of the farmers to treat all their 
seed oats except a small portion to serye as a check on the treatment. It 
may be well to state here that most of the farmers who agreed to make the 
tests were under the impression that their oat crops of the previous seasons 
were comparatively free from smut. The test fields were distributed over 
Madison, Grant, Laporte, Pulaski and Benton counties. 
When the oats headed out the county agents counted the smutted 
heads and figured out the percentage of smut on the treated and untreated 
plots. In Madison County, where the writer assisted the county agent, 
