New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. A81 
above, acid phosphate, sulphate of potash and nitrate of soda were 
applied equally and in liberal quantities. 
Taking the whole series of experiments into consideration it 
appears that the soils have been varied from pure sand and manure 
on the one hand to medium clay loam and manure on the other. 
A very light sandy loam also has been tried and the texture of 
the clay loam has been lightened by adding sand in various preo- 
portions. There is nothing in the results to show that a lght 
sandy soil is essential to securing the best results in forcing head 
lettuce. In fact, in these tests the best lettuce has been grown on 
the clay loam where its texture has been loosened by mixing lib- 
eral quantities of stable manure with the rotted sod. This pro- 
duces a soil full of “ fibre” with a great capability for conserving 
moisture and with a superabundance of available plant food. 
With 50 per cent of sand added to the clay loam and manure, 
see Soil 11, Crop IV, the crop was three days later, the heads 
averaged slightly less in weight, the texture, firmness and general 
appearance were not so good and the tip-burn decidedly increased. 
When the texture of the clay loam was loosened by increasing the 
sand 16 per cent and 26 per cent with Crop I and 32 per cent with 
Crops II and III, the only noticeable advantage was a very slight 
tendency to earlier maturity where the larger percentages of sand 
were used. 7 
A comparison of the records of the four crops, as set forth in 
Table 4, might at first give the impression that the different crops 
do not agree very closely as to their results, but a more careful 
study will show that in reality they conflict with each other but 
very little, if at all. With the first crop there was no marked 
difference in the weight of the lettuce on the different soils. With 
the second crop the sand and manure, Soil 6, gave decidedly 
heavier plants than did the soils which contained clay loam, but 
_ the latter really gave superior lettuce, for the plants on Soil 6 
formed rather loose heads, actually less valuable for market than 
the more compact though somewhat smaller lettuce which was 
31 
