Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. _xxix
given special training in this line of work. With the rapid
increase in the numbers of samples submitted for examina-
tion, it will be necessary for the Experiment Station to
_ employ regularly trained assistants to keep this work up to
the demands made upon us. The new addition to the Ex-
periment Station building has provided the Department with `
an excellent seed laboratory which it is-proposed to equip
completely with the most approved modern apparatus for _
seed testing and investigation. Good seeds are absolutely
necessary to successful agriculture. It is believed, there-
fore, that this little laboratory has before it a future of very g
great usefulness to the farmers and seedsmen of this State.
For many years, this Department has been engaged in
studying forage plants with a view to testing their adapta-
bility to Kentucky conditions and also with reference to
their improvement._ During the period covered by this
report, we have had under cultivation [on the Experiment
Station farm at Lexington, 312 plots from an eightieth to a
twentieth of an acre in area devoted to testing different for-
age plants, fiber plants and grains, to experiments with
insectsand insecticides, and to different systems of rotation.
Of forage plants, we have now tested about everything con-
sidered at all promising, either native or introduced, that
has been brought to our notice. In 1913, we had fifty-six
varieties of soy beans in our plots and sixteen varieties of
cowpeas. Of wheat we have kept but a small number of
promising varieties, which it is our purpose to improve.
Special attention is also being paid to strains of timothy,
clover, alfalfa and bluegrass.
ln this Department. test systems of crop rotation have
been conducted for a good many years in cooperation with .
the Bureau of Plant lndustry of the United States Depart-