New YorK AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 187 
sowed three twentieth-acre plats with dodder-infested alfalfa seed 
from three different sources. The exact number of dodder seeds 
applied to Plats I and II is not known, but the seed used was taken 
from lots analyzing, respectively, 105 and 360 dodder seeds per 
pound. Since one and one-half pounds of seed were sown ou 
each plat, it is likely that Plat I received about 157 and Plat II 540 
dodder seeds. In both cases the dodder was one of the small- 
seeded kinds, Cuscuta epithymum Murr. Plat III received seed 
containing (by actual count) 120 seeds of one of the large-seeded 
dodders. A fourth plat of the same size was sown, at the same 
time, with red clover seed containing 100 dodder seeds from the 
same source as those used on Plat III. 
A good stand of alfalfa and clover was obtained on all four 
plats, but there was never any evidence of dodder. Each of the 
plats was carefully examined several times during 1906 and 1907 
without the discovery of a single dodder plant. Concerning the 
viability of the dodder seed at time of sowing nothing is known ex- 
cept that a part, at least, of the seed used on Plat II] must have been 
viable since some dodder from the same lot of seed germinated in 
March, 1907. 
Narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago lanceolata L.), also called 
English plantain and buckhorn and generally regarded as a trouble- 
some weed, was found to be a very common impurity. Thirty-six 
and one-half per ct. of the samples contained more or less of it. 
The actual amount was determined in only fifteen of the worst-in- 
fested samples in which the numbers of seeds per pound of alfalfa 
seed were as follows: 154, 224, 246, 332, 348, 453, 477, 513, 586, 
605, 627, 756, 944, 1451 and 1457. 
Yellow foxtail (Setarta glauca (L.) Beauv.) and_ green 
tema (Selaria )viridis, (L.) Beauv.) were. found in, ‘a 
large percentage of the samples. Although these are trouble- 
some weeds they are so universally distributed that their presence 
in alfalfa seed is not considered to be of any particular importance. 
Wild carrot (Daucus carota L.) also occurred in a considerable 
number of the samples, and Russian thistle (Salsola kali L. var 
tenuifolia G. F..W. Mey), was found in 78 of the 548 samples ex- 
amined. 
Besides a large number of unimportant weeds some kinds of 
which occurred in many samples, the following troublesome weeds 
were found occasionally: Curled dock (Rumex crispus L.), crab 
grass (Digitaria sanguinalis (L.) Scop.), Canada thistle (Cirstum 
