1. All determinations of soil moisture should be made to a depth of from four to five feet for wheat and oats, and to a depth of six or seven feet for grasses.

2. Unless all the soil under consideration is very uniform, determinations of the hygroscopic coefficient are indispensable. The determination of this value is extremely important even where the soil is uniform.

3. The storage capacity for available water of the two soil types studied, may be placed at from five to seven inches of rainfall for wheat and oat crops.

4. A better idea of the moisture conditions of the soil at Indian Head may be obtained from a casual examination in the field than from the drying and weighing of the samples, unless the hygroscopic coefficient is considered.

5. The moisture stored in the subsoil during the previous summer, and not the frost of the preceding winter, is the cause of the high yields of wheat and oats obtained in southern Saskatchewan.

6. The soil of southern Saskatchewan does not remain permanently frozen at any depth.

7. Investigations of the moisture conditions to a depth of only 12 to 16 inches are of no value and may often be entirely misleading.

It has been shown that many rocks, when samples are taken from such a depth as precludes all possibility of weathering, contain nitrogen in amounts comparable to those present in soil, especially when the strata consist of indurated clays like the Lower Lias, Oxford, Kimmeridge or London Clay. Since the rocks also contain carbon the nitrogen is without doubt of organic origin; the carbon and nitrogen compounds represent the humus present in the clay when it was deposited, and are in fact the mineralised remains of that organic matter. When soil is produced by the weathering of such rocks these carbon and nitrogen compounds will remain wholly or in part in the soil and may there account for a considerable proportion of the total nitrogen they contain. It thus becomes of some importance to ascertain if this nitrogen is ever likely to become available for the plant by the normal processes of bacterial oxidation, or whether it has passed into such a state of combination as to be susceptible of no further change under such conditions as prevail in the soil. If the compounds are too mineralised or bituminised to be attacked by bacteria it would explain the fact that much of the nitrogen present in soils seems to remain permanently beyond the reach of plants. For example the soil of Broadbalk wheat field at Rothamsted, which had been cropped continuously with wheat for 50 years without the addition of any manure, still showed in 1893 very nearly 0·1 per cent. of nitrogen, equivalent to about 2500 lbs. per acre in the top 9 inches of soil; yet the average wheat crop on this plot only contains about 17 lbs. of nitrogen, of which 5 lbs. is supplied annually by the rain, without taking into account any further additions by the action of Azotobacter and kindred organisms.

The Khedivial Agricultural Society of Egypt recently voted a capital expenditure of £2000 towards the establishment of a Mendelian Experiment Station for the study of heredity in cotton.

Ten grams each of the manures Sulphate of Ammonia, Nitrate of Soda, Calcium Cyanamide and Nitrate of Lime (Notodden, 1906) were exposed to air in a room the windows of which were kept open during the experiment, and the changes in weight noted for a period of twenty-nine days. At the same time Barometric and Temperature (Wet and Dry Bulb) readings were taken daily.

The process of making silage is an ancient one and the scientific investigations date back at least to 1873, when Weiske, at the Proskau experiment station, showed that there was a loss of carbohydrate, fibre and protein in making silage from sainfoin and other crops. It was, however, by no means general till after the publication in 1875 of Goffart's remarkable success with maize silage at Burtin, in the barren district of Sologne (Loire-et-Cher). Both Grandeau and Barral analysed Goffart's silage, the former noted the production of volatile and non-volatile acids and labelled them acetic and lactic acids respectively, in which practice he has been followed by most later analysts. Five years later Kellner demonstrated by careful quantitative measurements that the decrease in protein was accompanied by an increase in the amount of ‘amide’ nitrogen. In his experiments about 28 per cent. of the nitrogen was lost, but in a subsequent paper this was traced to volatilisation of ammonia during manipulation of the sample. Kellner considered, and probably correctly, that no nitrogen is lost in the free state from the silo.

When the green parts of living plants are cut up and packed in a loosely covered vessel allowing entrance of air, mould soon makes its appearance and decomposition begins: the mass becomes alkaline and is ultimately converted into black humic bodies quite unfit for cattle food. But if air is excluded the change is fundamentally different; no mould developes, the temperature rises, the mass takes on a greenishbrown colour and characteristic odour, it becomes acid and for a long period is suitable for cattle food. The former is a putrefactive change, the latter gives rise to silage.

Soil which has been heated without drying to temperatures from 60° to 150° behaves unfavourably towards the germination of seeds, the total seeds germinating decreasing (in most cases), and the time necessary for their germination increasing, with the temperature of heating. The average results are sufficiently regular to show that the alteration in the soil must begin at temperatures as low as about 30°.

Sterilised seeds behave in the same way as unsterilised ones, except that the time required for germination is uniformly longer. This is due to an alteration in the seeds by the sterilising agent, and not to the destruction of bacteria, for sterilised seeds do not recover their property of ready germination on being re-inoculated. Various sterilising agents were examined, but mercuric chloride was the only one found to be satisfactory and efficient.