EXPERIMENTS IN "STRIPPING." 



433 



visitors to the institution and farm as a remarkably even 

 and regular one." 



The following tabulated statement gives the general 

 particulars of the experiment as regards the cultivation 

 of the crop, and the results : 



" Although the practice of stripping had been followed 

 for many years on the farm without any perceptible injury 

 to the crop, these results, showing so considerable an ad- 

 dition to the crop from taking off the leaves, were hardly 

 anticipated/' 



The experiment appears to have been carried out with 

 great care, the entire crop of both roots and leaves having 

 been accurately weighed, and every precaution taken to 

 give it a reliable value. In the report of the experiment 

 it is suggested that by removing the leaves the plants are 

 more exposed to the direct action of the air and the light 

 both agents of importance to vegetable growth ; which 

 suggestion seems to be strengthened by the fact that the 

 outside drills of mangold, which had been weighed sepa- 

 rately for many years past, invariably had given a produce 

 at the rate of several tons per acre more than the general 

 crop. These important results will probably induce other 

 growers to test the practice by experiments in the ensuing 

 mangold crop. It is very desirable that this should be 

 done on a sufficiently extensive scale say stripping every 

 alternate row in the field to avoid those chances of error 

 which are so common in similar trials where only small 

 selected areas are experimented upon. It would be desir- 



