158 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
POT EXPERIMENTS WITH NITROGENOUS 
FERTILIZERS. 
BY CSP HELPS: 

During the past twelve years the Station has conducted 
experiments on the effects of nitrogenous fertilizers upon the 
yields of some of our common farm crops, and especially upon 
the proportions of nitrogen in them, ‘The crops grown in these. 
experiments have included some of the legumes, as clover and 
soy beans, cereal crops, such as corn and oats, and many of 
our common grasses; in general, such crops as are commonly 
used for feeding dairy stock, the chief object being to deter- 
mine the effects of fertilizer nitrogen in different forms and 
quantities upon the feeding value of the crop. 
Previous to 1898 these investigations were made chiefly in. 
the field, upon the plots of the special nitrogen experiments, 
as explained in the Reports of the Station from year to year... 
Several difficulties have been met with in these experiments, 
which are quite common to field experiments in general. Chief’ 
among these are, first, the difficulty of finding soil of a uniform 
quality for all plots; second, the variation in season, especially- 
in the amount of rainfall; and third, the difficulty of using the 
fertilizers so that the crop will get the full benefit of them and. 
at the same time not get plant food in varying amounts from. 
other sources. 
Since 1898 experiments for the study of the effect of nitrog-. 
enous fertilizers upon the proportion of nitrogen in plants have. 
also been made on a small scale in such a way that various. 
external influences that might affect the growth of the plants. 
may be somewhat regulated. T’he plants that have been used 
are oats, Hungarian grass, orchard grass and soy beans. These 
are grown in pots by the use of the same kinds and proportions. 
of nitrogenous and mineral fertilizers as are used in the field 
experiments, the purpose of the pot experiments being to. 
verify the results obtained in the field experiments, and to. 
