Y BULLETIN 33, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
experiments have been conducted principally with spring varieties 
of wheat, oats, and barley, but some work has also been done with 
winter wheat and rye, spring rye, emmer, flax, proso, and grain 
sorghum. : 
The yearly reports of the cooperative cereal investigations at the 
Dickinson substation have been included in the annual reports of 
the substation? for the years 1908 to 1910. Most of the experi- 
ments reported upon in this bulletin were begun during that period. 
The work had not progressed far enough in 1910 to justify a sum- 
mary of the results. With the results of seven years’ experiments 
now available, it seems desirable to summarize them and to draw 
such conclusions as they appear to warrant. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBSTATION. 
It is believed that the results obtained at the Dickinson substation 
are applicable to only a portion of the northern Great Plains region. 
That section lying west and south of the Missouri River in North 
Dakota and including the eastern portion of Dawson and Custer 
Counties in Montana has conditions very similar to those at Dickin- 
son. The rainfall decreases southward into South Dakota and is 
so limited in some places that dry farming as now practiced is not 
profitable. A comparison of the climate of any locality in this 
section with that of Dickinson will aid greatly in determining to 
what degree the Dickinson results may be applied. In order to per- 
mit such a comparison, a detailed description of the substation is 
here given, together with data on the amount and distribution of 
rainfall and other climatological factors under which the experi- 
ments were conducted. 
LOCATION. 
The Dickinson substation is located 14 miles northwest of the city 
of Dickinson, near the center of Stark County, N. Dak., in the south- 
western portion of the State. It comprises 160 acres, which. with 
the exception of one rather high butte, is gently rolling land. The 
elevation is approximately 2,500 feet above sea level. The topog- 
raphy about Dickinson is that of a broken prairie, fairly typical 
of western North Dakota or that part of the State west of the Mis- 
sour! River which is known as the old (preglacial) landscape of 
North Dakota. The flat tops of the buttes and table-lands have 
been going through the process of erosion since before the glacial 
period. | . | | 
- During the past decade this section, comprising approximately 
12,500,000 acres, has passed through a process of transformation 
1 North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, Dickinson Sub-Experiment Station, 
Annual Reports 1-3, 1908-1910. 
