162 HATCH EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



are radically wrong in many ways. The houses are imper- 

 fectly supplied with ventilation, consequently little use can 

 be made of this necessary feature. Then, again, they are 

 supplied either wholly or partially with two layers of glass, 

 which are set about two inches apart, thus leaving an air 

 space in between for the purpose of keeping out the cold, 

 but which in reality becomes filled up with dirt, and is an 

 excellent aid in shutting out the light. Plants started in 

 such a house in winter continually suffer from lack of light, 

 — a feature which we have often observed in the greenhouses 

 in this State. Their leaves become pale, and they are at- 

 tached to the stalk by means of elongated petioles, and pre- 

 sent all the phenomena of partial etiolation, or, in other 

 words, they resemble plants grown in the dark. If we add 

 to such plants an enormously high temperature, without any 

 proper ventilation to make them stocky and rugged, then 

 we have a crop that is so tender and abnormally matured 

 that it is incapable of standing strong sunlight. If such a 

 crop is carried over until spring, and subjected to the intense 

 rays of the sun occurring in that season of the year, the ten- 

 der, etiolated, sickly colored leaves commence to wilt even 

 with the house closed and a considerable degree of moisture. 



We observed as many as a dozen houses last spring af- 

 fected in this way, and not in a single one did we see more 

 than a dozen or so of what might be termed fairly good- 

 colored and healthy plants. Whenever we observed a plant 

 which possessed any color or texture in its leaves, we found 

 plants which showed no indication of the wilt. We exam- 

 ined at the same time in another locality a crop of a similar 

 variety of cucumbers grown in a house provided with a 

 single layer of glass, which had also received sufficient venti- 

 lation, and the plants were in an exceedingly vigorous con- 

 dition. 



These facts show what it is always necessary to bear in 

 mind, that some varieties of plants can be grown by differ- 

 ent growers with entirely different results, and that it is 

 essential to pay the greatest attention to conditions which 

 are normal to the plants. 



While the cause of the cucumber wilt is due, as we have 



