68 
EIGHTH REPORT. 
It lias fallen to the Farm Department of the Experiment Station to 
carry forward some investigations in the fields as to the work performed 
in gross by the bacteria in the nodules on the roots of certain legumes. 
The whole subject is so familiar to the audience to which this paper 
is addressed that I shall not attempt here any systematic statement 
of the etiology of these nodules or their methods of operation. I shall 
simply report certain definite experiments as a contribution to the 
literature on the subject. Naturally the technical, and therefore the 
more valuable part of the work concerning this interesting phase of 
Soy Beans after Soy Beans. 
plant life has fallen to the Department of Bacteriology, leaving me the 
field work on plots of such legumes as have been grown at the college. 
The first observation of record in the technical part of this nodule 
business was the difference in the number and size of the nodules on soy 
beans growing on muck upon which various fertilizers had been applied. 
In field 13 of the college farm, east side of the lane and adjacent upon 
the northward to the Grand Trunk railroad, there is an area of muck 
used for several years in a series of experiments to test the influence of 
various fertilizers on the productivity of the soil. The long way of the 
plots was east and west, the width north and south, being gen¬ 
erally two rods. Each plot was treated with single fertilizers or some 
combination of fertilizers. Across the whole series of plots, soy beans 
were sown in rows eighteen inches apart and rather thickly in the row. 
