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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XL, No. 280. 



planting should be done by one man only 

 and all upon the same day. One man may 

 make the drills for the peas, turnips, beans 

 or onions, but only one should do it for any 

 given experiment. Another man may drop 

 the seeds, but he should drop it all, unas- 

 sisted by a second person anywhere. A 

 third person may do the covering, but no 

 one should help him. So important is this 

 matter that it is the writer's plan to have 

 the sowing or planting of a plot begun at 

 such a time that it will be finished the same 

 day. Some experiments have been ruined 

 by beginning late one day and a shower at 

 night prevents the finishing upon the next. 

 He remembers well noting the untimely ap- 

 pearing of the beans upon one plot when a 

 portion had been covered by one man and 

 the remaining portion by another. Some 

 will cover a little deeper than another and 

 firm the soil excessively. There is in mind 

 an instance where one row of onion seed 

 was accidentally trodden upon and it soon 

 became conspicuous for the good stand of 

 vigorous plants. Another instance is with 

 beans in which the writer was the guilty 

 party. He was doing the covering, and at 

 the call of the dinner bell, left a row and a 

 half of the dropped seed to lie in the open 

 row and exposed to the hot May sun. That 

 row and a half was covered an hour later 

 and many others were planted in freshly- 

 opened rows during the afternoon. When 

 the young plants appeared two weeks or so 

 later the row and a half made a very poor 

 stand that was evident to every one who 

 passed that way. The moisture of the 

 open row was dried out and a highly heated 

 and dried soil was placed upon the seeds 

 instead of the cool moist soil of a freshly- 

 opened row, and in this there seems to be 

 the great difference in the plants. If I had 

 not covered all the seed and knew it was 

 all out of the same sack it would have been 

 diificult to convince me that the cause was 

 in the delay in covering the seed . 



If it is so essential that the seed be cov- 

 ered by but one person through a whole 

 plot, it goes without saying that plants 

 should be set with even greater care. The 

 writer has seen rows of cabbage, tomato 

 and even strawberry plants that differed 

 greatly from each other and the only point 

 of variation was the person with the dibble. 



Not more than one pei'son is permitted to 

 set the egg plants, for example, in an ex- 

 periment plot at the New Jersey Experi- 

 ment grounds. A second person may as- 

 sist, but the ideal in all this work is when 

 the same individual has brought the plants 

 through all their vicissitudes of the seed bed , 

 the potted plant and placed them in the field. 



The Importance of Surplus. — There are so 

 many contingencies that the experienced 

 experimenter will have a large surplus in 

 store in many ways. He should have some 

 plots or portions of plots at hand in case 

 land is needed at any time. There needs 

 to be a surplus of any given seed for emer- 

 gency. A crop may fail and a reseeding is 

 advisable or the stand is so poor that a por- 

 tion of the plot is made the basis of a new 

 test, and the same old stock of seed is 

 desired. 



There should be a surplus of plants in 

 the row so that they may be thinned to the 

 desired distance after the chances are that 

 there will be no further losses. Some un- 

 foreseen cut worm may take the corn or a 

 bad smelling bug the squash vine and the 

 need of surplus plants is evident. 



Nowhere else does the old saying hold so 

 strongly as in the plot experiment. "One 

 for the cut worm, one for the crow ; five to 

 plant and three to grow." The writer has 

 had too many plots prove failures from a 

 lack of a stand of plants that might have 

 been avoided by greater liberality of seed 

 to let this point go by without more than a 

 passing notice. 



In the case of plants that are set out the 

 rule is still more important. There should 



