New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 19 
early stages of their growth and emphasizes the importance of 
doing the thinning very early in the season. 
Fertilizers for forcing lettuce— Complete commercial fertil- 
izers which differ from each other only in material from which 
the supply of nitrogen is secured are being tried both alone and in 
combination with varying proportions of stable manure, on soils 
for forcing lettuce. Each formula is tried with head lettuce and 
with loose lettuce, both on medium heavy clay loam and on very 
light sandy loam. The object of this work is to throw some light 
on the question as to whether, in the forcing of lettuce, com- 
mercial fertilizers may be profitably substituted either wholly or 
in part for stable manure. It is desirable that the results which 
have been thus far obtained should receive further confirmation 
before being published. 
Treatment for gooseberry mildew.— Because of the destructive 
character of gooseberry mildew and the economic importance of 
this disease in all parts of America where gooseberries are culti- 
vated, experiments have been conducted for the purpose of treat- 
in the disease on a commercial scale. Potassium sulphide has 
been compared with other fungicides for this purpose and very 
early treatments have been compared with later treatments so as 
to learn if possible just when to spray and what to spray with in 
order to hold the mildew in check most successfully. This par- 
ticular line of investigation has been in progress since 1897. The 
results, as set forth in Bulletin 161, show that the use of potas- 
sium sulphide has been followed with better success than the use 
of Bordeaux mixture, lysol or formalin. Bordeaux mixture 
proved comparatively useless; formalin was somewhat more ef- 
fective and lysol gave promising results, ranking next to the 
potassium sulphide. Very early spraying generally gave better 
results than when the first treatment was made medium early or 
late. Winter treatment was tested only one season. It did not 
give sufficient advantage to justify the expense of making it. 
Apple canker.— A disease of apple tree limbs has done and is 
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