AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 121 



cultivation really is essential to success. Some plants were given 

 the ordinary treatment of our garden, while a duplicate lot was 

 given only sufficient attention to keep down the weeds. Unfor- 

 tunately the varieties used — New York Improved and Round Purple 

 — proved so unproductive that we are not justified in drawing final 

 conclusions. In this instance, however, the plants given infrequent 

 cultivation produced fully as many fruits as those under conditions 

 usually regarded as more favorable. If it be proved that the egg plant 

 may be grown with less care than commonly supposed, the fact, 

 though of no importance to the gardener, may serve to remove some 

 objections to the more common use of this vegetable. 



4. Effects of Root Pruning : To ascertain whether a sudden 

 check in the growth of the plants would result in increasing the 

 number of fruits set, several of the main roots of a number of plants 

 were severed August 19, after a small number of fruits had formed. 

 Results were contradictory. Some varieties showed considerable 

 increase in the number of fruits set, as compared with duplicate 

 plants not pruned ; others were apparently injured by the operation. 

 The advantage of the operation from a practical point ol view is 

 questionable. 



Summary. 



1. The percentage of plants bearing marketable fruits, and the 

 productiveness of individual plants, are increased b,y early setting 

 in the field. 



2. Better results are obtained from deep cultivation with the 

 horse hoe than from shallow hand work. 



3. Early dwarf varieties may be successfully grown with the 

 ordinary care given tomato plauts. 



4. The advantage of root pruning egg plants is questionable. 



V — Notes of Potatoes. 



The principal work heretofore undertaken with potatoes has been 

 in the line of a study of the influence of climate in causing varia- 

 tion of the plant — an experiment still in progress. During the past 

 season a few experiments with different methods of culture were 

 taken up incidentally. 



1. A comparison of the Trench System with Ordinary Culture: 

 A few years ago considerable interest was aroused by the accounts 

 of wonderful yields of potatoes obtained by a S3 7 stem of culture 



