Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. xvii
1- Tobacco Investigations. The tobacco investigations, in A
le cooperation with the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United
y_ States Department of Agriculture, have been continued dur-
rt ing the past year. The object of this work is the im-
OI- provement of native strains of tobacco by pure breeding and
nt seed selection; the determination by experiment, of the best
le, use of fertilizers for improving the quality and yield of to-
mg bacco; the development of a better rotation system with
ral tobacco as the leading crop and, lastly, the edect of environ- A
l.i_ ment upon the tobacco plant and improvements in methods
Hd of cultivation and curing. Pure bred seeds of a number of
led varieties of tobacco have been distributed, free of charge, to
ith tobacco growers in the State, upon application, and also a
ast large number of lots of tobacco seed have been cleaned and I
graded at the Experiment Station.
ive DEPARTMENT or ANIMAL HUSBANDRY. (Beef Cattle,Sheep
me and Swine). Among the more important lines of work
een carried out in this Department of Animal Husbandry during
S to the past year is the investigation of infectious abortion in
ata mares. A great many valuable foals are lost annually
the through this disease which it seems is becoming increasingly
[_ad_ prevalent in many sections of the State. Professor Good
has been successful in isolating the organism causing this
Sue disease and has found it to be different from the organism
in_ causing the disease in the cow. The disease has been
51.9 experimentally produced in the mare with pure cultures of
{dm this organism, and the germ recovered from the uterine
was _ exudate. It has been found further that the disease can be
wmv diagnosed in mares by means of the agglutination and com-
mate plement fixation tests. The effort is now being made to
discover a preventive and cure for this malady. In this
department the study of contagious abortion of cows has