BULLETIN 257. 



ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS PUBLISHED BY THE 

 STATION IN 1916 BUT NOT INCLUDED IN THE 

 BULLETINS. 



A complete list of all the publications issued by and from the 

 Station in 1916 is given on pages xii to xiv of the introduction 

 to this Report. The following pages contain abstracts of the 

 papers issued during the year that are not included in the Bul- 

 letins or Official Inspections for the year. 



A METHOD OF CORRECTING FOR SOIL HETERO- 

 GENEITY IN VARIETY TESTS.* 



The correct interpretation of field trials, such as variety 

 tests, fertilizer experiments, etc., is often rendered difficult, 

 if not impossible, because of the great differences in soil in 

 different parts of the same field. This is often true even in 

 fields which to the eye appear quite uniform. Nevertheless, 

 field trials are becoming more and more a necessity in many 

 phases of agricultural investigation. 



Within recent years a number of investigators have shown 

 that the experimental error in such trials can be greatly reduced 

 by the use of systematically repeated plots. Nevertheless, if 

 the number of repetitions is not large, certain experiments* 

 may still be unduly influenced by irregularities in the field. It 

 would therefore be desirable if some method could be devised 

 by which the yields of individual plots could be corrected in 

 such a way as to take account of these irregularities. 



Check plots have frequently been used for this purpose, 

 many cases. 



*This is an abstract from a paper by Frank M. Surface and Raymond 

 Pearl having the same title and published in the Journal of Agricultural 

 Research, Vol. V. pp. 1039-1050, 1916. 



