8 MAlNli AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I913. 



do not feel that we were to blame for that and we are ready 

 to correct it in any way that you suggest. If there are other 

 particulars in which the experiment seems to you to be unfair 

 I would be glad to have them stated in definite form. I had 

 supposed that the plans of the experiment were agreed to by 

 your company." 



Under date of June 8 the company wrote : 



"Yours of recent date received, and in answer will say that 

 we doubt very much if it would do any good to put on ]\rin- 

 eral Fertilizer this late in the season to the plot of ground in 

 question at the experiment farm unless we had plenty of rain. 

 We note that on Plot D you have used 60 pounds of Armour 

 4-8-7 in the drill and intend to apply 30 pounds more later^ 

 making 90 pounds of what you call high grade fertilizer. Now 

 against this plot you have used only 40 pounds of our Mineral 

 Fertilizer and we think that this is hardly a fair test consider- 

 ing in your estimation that Mineral Fertilizer is poorer than or- 

 dinary soil." The letter then proceeds to make similar com- 

 parisons on other plots, and concludes : "We think this is a 

 very^ unfair test. However, it is too late to make any change.^ 

 and we will have to await the results." 



June 10 the company were written as follows : 



"Your letter of June 9 is at hand. Frankly I do not like its 

 tenor. It seems to me to be an evasive letter. December 1910 

 I wrote you outlining the experiment which I planned to put in 

 effect provided you desired to have it carried out. I wrote you 

 at that time exactly how much fertilizer we intended to use 

 on the plots that we were going to fertilizer with commercial 

 fertilizer and farm manure. The experiment was planted ex- 

 actly as outlined there, with the exception that we used one- 

 twentieth acre plots instead of one-tenth acre plots, as outlined 

 in my letter of December. Relative to the amounts of the Min- 

 eral Fertilizer which were to be used, that was left, as you will 

 find in that letter, entirely to your discretion. I told you that 

 there were to be two tenth acre plots. I asked you to furnish 

 ^Mineral Fertilizer enough for those plots. You sent 100 pounds 

 in a bag which was rather loosely woven so that some of it 

 sifted out in transit. We also took a pint out of the bag for 

 the purpose of chemical analysis. We applied all of the fertil- 

 izer which you have sent to the two plots of one-twentieth 



