BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 281 
particular jar and carefully mixed upon a glass plate before the 
loam proper was added. 
There were four sets of jars, each of five pieces, with the ex- 
ception that one set consisted of six jars. The vegetable-mould 
tested was in the form of loam, of the same sorts that had been 
employed in earlier experiments of one kind and another in the 
Bussey laboratory. In the first set of jars loam from the garden 
of Mr. R. Beatley, Chelsea, Mass., was used; in the second set 
loam from an old pasture of Mr. Henry Saltonstall, Lynnfield, 
Mass. ; in the third set loam from the Plain-field of the Bussey JIn- 
stitution ;* and in the fourth set loam from an experimental plot 
upon the Plain-field upon which crops of beans had been grown 
during four consecutive years before the loam was collected.¢ It 
will be seen on inspecting the tables that each of the given kinds 
of loam was employed in several different proportions. 
Three buckwheat seeds were sown in each jar on the 17th of 
November, 1877, and all the jars were watered with rain-water, 
and nothing else, from first to last. For the pieces numbered III., 
which, with one exception, carried an unusually large quantity of 
the materials, pains were taken to select jars that were known to 
be a little more capacious than the others; while for the jars 
numbered IV. and V. somewhat smaller quantities both of the sand 
and of the calcined earth were weighed out than for Nos. I., I]., and 
III., in order to make room for the increased quantities of the loams 
proper. The experiments numbered IV. and V. are consequently 
not so exactly comparable with Nos. I., I., and III., as might be 
wished, though the differences are really small and probably in- 
significant. 
Each of the crops was dried at 90° to 100° C. before weighing. 
The other details of the experiments will appear from the tables. 
* This Plain-field loam was collected before any experiments had been 
made upon the field. 
+ This ‘‘ Bean-plot” loam was taken from the plot marked ‘‘ B. 5 Beans,” 
in the series of experiments described on pages 88, 140, 315 of Vol. 2. of 
the Bulletin, and was selected as an example of soil that had been severely 
cropped. 
