20 Dinecror’s REPORT OF THE 
economic importance, particularly in the cabbage and cauliflower 
industry of Long Island. or some years certain of these rots 
have been studied jointly at this Station and the Vermont Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station and the results of a part of this 
study are given in Technical Bulletin 11. The first part of the 
bulletin shows that the organisms are identical and the second 
part describes the bacterial enzyms by means of which the bacteria 
destroy the plant tissue. ; 
DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY. 
Potato spraying experiments.— During the season of 1908 the 
potato spraying experiments begun in 1902 were continued along 
the same lines as in previous years. The results have been pub- 
lished in Bulletin 311. In the ten-year experiment at Geneva 
six sprayings increased the yield 89 bu. per acre, while three 
sprayings increased it 29.5 bu. In the duplicate of this experi- 
ment at Riverhead, Long Island, the gain due to five sprayings 
‘was 15.3 bu. per acre and to three sprayings 10.75 bu. In four- 
teen farmers’ business experiments, including 200 acres, the 
average gain due to spraying was 18.5 bu. per acre; the average 
total expense of spraying was $4.30 per acre and the average 
net profit $8.53 per acre. Eleven volunteer experimenters reported: 
gains averaging 66.3 bu. per acre. 
Thus far the results are highly favorable to the ‘practice of 
spraying. In the ten-year experiments at Geneva the average 
gain for seven years from spraying every two weeks has been 
110 bu. per acre, and from spraying three times during the season, 
84 bu. At Riverhead the corresponding gains have been smaller 
-— 54 and 29.3 bu. respectively. In 76 business experiments 
made in six. years the average gain due to spraying has been 
43.8 bu. per acre and the average net profit from spraying $17.94 
per acre. In 188 volunteer experiments reported in five years 
the average gain from spraying was 50.5 bu. per acre. 
