Condensed from an address by H. R. Wellman, Director, Giannici Foundation of Agricultural Economics, University of California, to the Annual Membership Meeting, California State Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, December 4, 1946.

Poor quality printed version digitised, due to the age of the manuscript the letters are blurred | Goats were introduced into New Zealand before it was settled by Europeans; for many years they have been present in every land district in the dominion, yet nobody has ever attempted a comprehensive survey of their uses or effects on agricultural production. In this dissertation an attempt will be made to describe the importance of goats in our present farm economy, giving some of their uses and some of their disadvantages.

1. The sodium biselenite method of seed testing as stated by Eidmann, with the presoaking step modified to involve 16 hours presoaking and 8 hours aeration, proved generally satisfactory on seeds of a wide range of agricultural plants. 2. As a prerequisite to the first, use of the method on a particular species, the relation between biselenite reaction on the one hand and seed germinability and seedling vitality on the other should be studied, and any necessary adjustments made in procedure or definition of reaction classes. 3. The biselenite test, suitably adjusted, may be used as an alternative for the standard seed germination test. It would have the advantage of being quicker, the saving in time varying from 4 to 12 days in readily germinable seeds to perhaps several months in seeds which require a period of after-ripening, assuming that the biselenite test could be made early in the after-ripening period. When perfected, the biselenite test might prove more accurate for certain purposes than the germination test. 4. The method, suitably adjusted, has possibilities for use in evaluating the potential seedling vitality of germinable seeds. It is possible, for example, to grade a lot of seed into a number of seed (or seedling) vitality classes. This would have an application in investigational work, for example, in evaluating the relative effects on seed vitality produced by a series of different storage conditions.

The USDA Agricultural Research Service 50th Anniversary Time Capsule contains materials compiled by ARS offices across the United States and Puerto Rico. The materials capture the work, accomplishments, and inventions of ARS between 1953 and 2003. Types of items included in the capsule are posters, photographs, ephemera, awards, computer software, brochures, stuffed animals, training items, paperweights, miniatures of inventions, buttons, audio tapes, key chains, articles, bookmarks, pens, clothing, and food replicas. In January 2005, DVD and VHS copies of the time capsule program videorecording were added to the collection. There is no sound on any of the recordings.

Chester N. Husman Awards: Screwworm Eradication Program Records contains awards given to Chester N. Husman and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) for their efforts in the screwworm eradication programs. Granting organizations include the U.S. War Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Mexican government.

Experiments at the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station are reported, comparing corn planted at different rates, in hills and drills, and on soils of four different productivity levels. The results support the findings of other workers in indicating that as growing conditions become more favorable the optimum stands are higher. They also show that adapted hybrids as a group have higher optimum stands than do open-pollinated varieties of comparable seasonal requirement, probably because of the greater vigor of the hybrids. The difference between the two optima amounts to about 1,800 to 2,000 plants per acre under favorable growing conditions. The effect of stand on grain yields is much greater at high than at low productivity levels. It would follow that where different soil treatments are being studied in field experiments, the planting rate should be the one expected to give an optimum stand for the better treatments. Such a stand would affect the poorer treatments relatively little but would make it possible to measure the full productivity of the better treatments. At optimum stands, the air-dry ears averaged a little more than half a pound each. The great pound-sized ears so often displayed in corn exhibits and sales literature merely indicate inefficient use of a favorable environment for corn. Furthermore, at optimum stands, competition tended to throw some of the plants into near or complete barrenness. Thirty-three hybrids averaged 113.7 bushels per acre with 13% barren or near-barren plants in 1935; and at the rate considered optimum, 60 hybrids averaged 89.1 bushels with 11% barren or near-barren plants in 1936. Tillering decreased rapidly as stands approached the optimum. At comparable stands tillering was much heavier in drilled rows than in checkrowed hills. In 1941 (Table 2) the much higher incidence tillering in the thinner drilled rows was not accompanied by higher yields than in the checkrowed hills of comparable stands. The experiments revealed no consistent relation between rate planting and resultant stand in terms of percentage of seed planted. Weeds were much more abundant where stands were thin in an experiment in 1943. The test weight of grain did not appear to be affected by differences in stand. There are several unfavorable effects of the heavier stands (Table 5). The harvested crop is less attractive because of the smaller ears and the higher proportion of nubbins. The silking period for a stand of five plants per 42 inches of row-space was roughly 2 days later than for a stand of three plants in the same space. This would probably delay maturity by four or five days. Conceivably the less abundant mineral nutrient supply for the individual plants could affect the quality of the grain adversely. The most serious effect of the heavier stands is in the higher incidence of stalk breakage.