Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/513

Rh inoculated quartz sand, were fifty-two inches and a half, and sixty-seven inches high; those in the duplicate pot 11 were sixtyone inches and a half, and fifty-one inches high; while those in pot 12, in a garden soil, were only fifty-three, and thirty-six inches high. As in the case with the peas, the plants in pot 12 flowered and seeded, while those in pots 10 and 11 did not.

Most of the blue lupines, as in 1888, failed to grow. After some reseeding two plants of yellow lupines were grown in each pot. Their relative development, November 29th, is shown in the photograph copied in Fig. 3.

The plants in pot 17, in the sterilized sand not inoculated with soil-microbes, were one inch and a half, and two inches high, "scarcely showing over the rim of the pot"; those in pot 18, in the inoculated quartz sand, measured twenty-four, and eighteen inches, "both spreading much beyond the width of the pot"; in pot 19, also in inoculated quartz sand, one plant was more than two feet and the other but little more than eight inches high; while in pot 20, in a soil from a field where lupines were growing, one plant was but sixteen inches and the other only eighteen inches high, and both less branching than those in pots 18 and 19.

"Unlike the peas and vetches, the yellow lupines, with soilextract seeding (pots 18 and 19, Fig. 3), flowered and podded freely. One plant in pot 18 had nine small pods, and one in pot 19 four large and three small ones. There were also in pot 20, with lupine soil, on one plant five pods and on the other six. Thus, in the quartz sand with lupine soil-extract seeding, the plants not only produced a great deal more vegetable matter than those in the lupine sand itself, but they as freely flowered and seeded." This was probably owing to the less porosity of the lupine soil when watered in the pot.

The root development and root-tubercles in the different pots may be briefly described as follows: In pots 1 of the peas, 9 of the vetches, and 17 of the lupines, no root-tubercles could he found, and the roots were decidedly less developed than in the inoculated pots 2, 3, 10, 11, 18, and 19.

In pot 4 of the peas in the garden soil the roots were abundant, but the root-tubercles were not as numerous as in pots 2 and 3' In pot 12 of the vetches, also with garden soil, the root-tubercles were less numerous, and the roots were not as well developed as in pots 10 and 11. In pot 20 of the yellow lupines, in a soil from a field where lupines were growing, the root-tubercles were not as numerous, and there was less root development than in pots 18 and 19.

In their "preliminary notice" of the results of these experiments, Sir J. B. Lawes and Prof. J. H. Gilbert say: "It will be