Report of the Director for the Year 1900. 

The principal inquiries now being conducted by the Station 
have to do with the nutrition of plants, animals, and man, and 
with the bacteriology of the dairy. During the year 1900 they 
have included experiments on the effects of fertilizers upon the 
growth and composition of plants, studies of the rations fed to 
milch cows, experiments upon the ripening of cream, studies 
of bovine tuberculosis, and investigations on the food and nutri- 
tion of man. ‘The objects, methods, and results of inquiries in 
these lines are given in this Report. Not all the work done 
during the year, however, is described in the present volume, 
as some of the results are not yet ripe for publication. On the 
other hand, some of the articles report the work of more than 
one year. 
riE PE DeAND POT EXPERIMENTS. WITH FPHERTILIZERS, 
Soil tests. —These tests have been carried on at Storrs contin- 
uously for eleven years upon the same field. The plan consists 
in dividing the field into parallel plots on which different fertil- 
izers are applied, and repeating the experiments with the same 
fertilizers on the same plots year after year, but with different 
crops—corn, potatoes, oats, and either cow peas or soy beans, 
grown ina four-year rotation. -The object of the tests is to 
get light upon the capacity of the soil to supply nitrogen, phos- 
phoric acid, and potash, the particular needs of the different 
crops for any or all of these ingredients, and the most economi- 
cal method of supplying them. From the results obtained 
during the eleven years on this particular field, it appears that 
the fertilizing ingredients most needed have varied with the 
crop. ‘That is to say, the peculiarities of the plant have had 
as much or more to do with deciding the demand for fertil- 
izers than any special deficiency of the soil. Cow peas and 
soy beans have been benefited by phosphoric acid and potash, 
but have paid little heed to nitrogen. Corn and oats have 
responded well to nitrogen, and both have been helped by 
