New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 47 
It is seen from this table that while but 5 of the check plats could 
be considered a success, 24 of the adjoining plats to which soil 
had been added produced enough hay to make them profitable. 
Combining the observations for these two years it is seen that 
natural inoculation was noted on all but 5 of the 65 check plats’ 
while the growth of alfalfa was sufficient to be counted as a suc- 
cess on only 13 of these plats. 
The application of inoculating soil to adjoining plats resulted in 
an abundant inoculation in all cases and 46 of these soil-inoculated 
plats produced successful crops of hay. 
Comparing the results from the inoculated and the check plats 
it is seen that there was an increase in successful fields among the 
latter of 33 out of a total of 65. As the check and the inoculated 
plats were adjoining arid had been treated alike, except in the 
matter of inoculation, this improvement may be justly ascribed to 
the application of the inoculating soil. 
CONCLUSIONS: 
A clear distinction should be made between the presence of nod- 
ules on a few plants in a field and the presence of sufficient in- 
oculation to insure a successful crop so far as it is affected by this 
factor. Some nodules were found on practically all of our check 
plats while but 15 of these plats produced successful crops. The 
results from the adjoining inoculated plats show that 33 of these 
65 check plats failed because they did not contain a sufficient 
amount of inoculation. From these results it will be easy to under- 
stand why, before attention was given to inoculation, alfalfa grow- 
ing outside of certain regions was generally considered a hopeless 
undertaking. 
The importance of inoculation is shown by the fact that where 
inoculating soil was applied 33 of the experimental fields were 
changed from a failure to a success. Instead of 13 successes as 
shown by the check plats there were 46 among the soil-inoculated 
plats. 
Reduced to farm practice this would indicate that without the 
application of artificial inoculation alfalfa growing on carefully 
selected land is a very uncertain proposition with the chances 4 to 
I against success. Where inoculating soil has been applied to 
ground which has been carefully selected alfalfa growing becomes as 
certain of success as almost any of our common crops. 

“There were two additional check plats among the experiments with 
germs placed upon the seed. 
