GERMINATION OF SEED AS AFFECTED BY SULFURIC ACID TREATMENT 299 



is used the work should be done over a porcelain or other acid-resistant 

 sink, and the waste acid washed away with water.) Wash for five minutes 

 in running water or until the seed is entirely free from acid. The seed 

 may be planted immediately or it may be allowed to dry before planting, 

 the former process being preferable for small lots of seed. 



RED CLOVER SEED 



The preliminary work on the treatment of clover seed was conducted 

 by treating it with acid for only 10 minutes. This treatment, as is shown 

 later, did not give so good results as a longer treatment would have 

 given. 



The earlier work was on the treatment of some seed obtained from 

 the Illinois Experiment Station. This seed was from some of the different 

 strains which that station was breeding. Part of the seed from each 

 sample had been sown in the field and some of it had given very poor 

 germination. This seed was from individual heads from different plants, 

 and shows the great variation relative to germination that exists in dif- 

 ferent plants. The results of the field trials with these lines are shown 

 in Table 2. 



TABLE 2. RED CLOVER SEED 



Tests of germination in field, between blotters, and in sand pots, untreated and treated 

 with concentrated sulfuric acid (sp. gr. 1.84) for 10 minutes 



This table shows that seed No. 127 gave a very good germination of 

 90 per cent in the field test, while No. 184 gave only 10 per cent. Thus 

 we see that seed from some plants gives a very high percentage of germi- 

 nation, while that from others has a very small amount of seed that 



