134 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
and it is the reason why it is important to get them on a basis where 
-they will be available for poor people when the prices of other foods 
get so high that they can not live on more expensive foods. 
Now, another line of work which seems important to develop is 
what we call plant-nutrition work; that is, the bringing together of 
the scientific knowledge upon the commercial production of any given 
crop; such questions, for instance, as determining why it is that the 
seed of a crop grown in the North will produce a better crop in the 
South than the seed of a crop grown in the South, and why it is that 
occasionally the seed of a crop grown in the South will produce a bet- 
ter crop in the North than the seed of that same crop grown in the 
North. It is the determination of those technical questions which lie 
at the bottom of many of the most important commercial problems in 
agriculture, and we find a necessity for them in connection with a lot 
of the problems which are being taken up in forage-plant investiga- 
tion with Dr. Sillman, and in the tobacco investigation and in the 
sugar-beet work. 
We find it is necessary to settle in this case some of those funda- 
mental problems, and I want to put the most expert men we have on 
that kind of work in solving those problems. e are spending this 
year practically $4,000 on that kind of work. I want to increase that 
amount $3,000 this year, making a total of very nearly $7,000. 
Then, the plant nutrition work. There are problems connected 
with the use of fertilizers, the effect of chemical fertilizers upon the 
nature of the crop produced. We find that a plant fed with certain 
combinations of fertilizers, for instance, with nitrogen, phosphoric 
acid, and potash in a ration of three, one, and one, prodties a different 
crop from a plant fed with those substances in the ratio of three, two, 
and one; that is, by increasing the phosphoric acid you can hasten 
maturity of the crop; you can change the color of it by increasing the 
ratio of the nitrogen to phosphoric acid and potash, and you can make 
other changes—in the keeping quality of apples, for instance, and 
matters of that kind; that is, it is the influence of the nutritive ratio 
upon the quality of the product. It isa very technical line of investi- 
gation, and I want to undertake some work along that line. Iam not 
doing anything on it now, but I want to put a thousand dollars into 
that work. I want about a thousand dollars to start that work. 
Then, finally, I want on the general fund—we have, under “‘ general 
administrative fund,” been paying for rent of buildings and so on; that 
is, the administrative work and along the problems I have been dis- 
cussing here, including the salaries of everybody employed, outside of 
what are included in these items here of about $17,500—I want an 
increase of about $4,000. A portion of that—about $5,000 of that 
sum—is kept as a reserve fund, because every year some exigency 
comes up that requires immediate investigation, and when an allot- 
ment is made to one of these problems that allotment remains through- 
out the year unless something stops it, unless something is necessary 
to stop it, that the money once allotted is not available for contingent 
problems that come up, and I keep the reserve fund for contingent 
ee and every single year the number of contingent problems 
as been much greater than we hare been able to take care of. 
Mr. Bowrs. You were going to tell us about some of the things 
that have been discontinued, that have been accomplished by the 
Department, that have reached the perfection stage and have been 
