16 
in some of the plants was seen to be four times greater than that in the © 
soil. . 
A. N. Berlese and L. Sostegni' have shown that calcareous soils will 
absorb large quantities of sulphate of copper without causing serious 
injury to plants growing therein. | 
Vermorel” applied copper sulphate in the form of bordeaux mixture 
to soil at the rate of about 30 pounds per acre without effect. Hethen 
applied to several plats amounts that would represent the accumulation 
at this rate of 50, 100, 200, 300, and 1,000 years, and seeded all with 
wheat. Taking 10 as the yield for plats receiving no treatment, the 
others would be expressed by 9, 7, 5, 3, and 2, respectively, showing 
that the copper in the soil has comparatively little effect on the plants. 
The foregoing abstracts present many contradictory opinions relative 
to the use of copper sulphate for the prevention of smut, and the 
writer conducted the following investigations with the hope that some- 
thing might be developed which would harmonize the diverse opinions 
or add some facts relative to the nature and amount of injury done to 
seeds by the use of copper solutions as fungicides. 
EFFECT OF COPPER SULPHATE AS SHOWN BY THE GERMINATION OF 
j; SEED. 
Since oats are very liable to attacks of smut, which causes annually 
an estimated loss cf about 8 per cent of the entire crop,’® experiments 
for its prevention were conducted with this grain, the seed of Seotch 
White Superior variety from the crop of 1894 being used. 
The plan of the experiment was to treat equal quantities of seed in 
solutions of known varying strengths for different periods of time, 
after which the seed were tested for their germinative ability. Dupli- 
cate and check lots were tested, so that the figures represent averages 
and not isolated experiments. Lots of 100 seeds each were counted 
and placed in solutions of copper sulphate of the following strengths: 
0.5, 1, 2, 3,5, and 10 per cent. Each series was allowed to remain in 
solutions fifteen and thirty minutes, and one, two, and three hours, the 
experiment requiring 700 seeds for each series. After having been 
allowed to soak for the desired length of time the seeds were removed 
from the solution, dried, and planted in a bed in a forcing heuse, being 
covered 0.5 inch with the sand. The experiments were begun January 
24 and were terminated April 29. During this period the temperature 
of the house varied from a minimum of about 50° F. to a maximum of 
about 80°. At the same time that the lot of seed was put in the solu- 
tion of copper there was a similar lot from the same parcel placed in 
water, both remaining immersed for the same length of time. The 
1Staz. Sper. Agr. Ital., 21, 1891, p. 229. 
> Rev. Sta. Viticole, Villefranche, 1890, No. 3, p. 187. 
>W.T.Swingle, U.S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook, 1894, p. 413. 
