The chemical laboratories being the last rooms in the Station building to be completed, were not fully equipped and ready for work until the middle of the present month (August), hence the amount of work yet accomplished is but small; and, as it is only the beginning of a line of work to be continued through several months, report upon it will be reserved for a future bulletin.

Large com crops in Iowa, point to general prosperity; but poor com means more or less want and suffering, as it is the crop upon which people depend most for a living. Good farmers have grown 75 bushels of corn per acre frequently in Iowa in ordinary seasons; but generally, the average yield per acrc is not more than half of the number of bushels just named. The causes of the difference between good and poor crops can be traced easily, to differences between the methods of preparing and tilling the soil and differences between varieties of corn. On the 15th day of last May. we planted about 50 varieties of corn on good, well drained ground, which had been assigned to the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. It was plowed late last fall and replowed and well harrowed just before planting

The great value of arsenic in the forms of Paris green and London purple for the destruction of leaf-eating insects has long been recognized. As pure white arsenic in solution is occasionally recommended to take the place of the above named arsenites, and as I have been repeatedly urged to recommend its use on account of its greater strength and cheapness, the following experiments were mailed for the purpose of determining whether or not it can be safely used in this way for insecticidal purposes:

One part of arsenic is soluble in 10 parts of boiling water and in 100 parts of cold water, the solution being as clear as the water used and remaining for an indefinite length of time without any sediment forming.

In order to have solutions of known strength throughout, one ounce of arsenic was in each case dissolved in a gallon of boiling water for a standard solution, and from this solutions of desired strengths were made

wet backward spring and well distributed summer rains have saved Iowa from extensive chinch-bug losses this year. The bugs have been reported, however, in injurious numbers over limited areas, in various parts of the state. There probably is no year when there are not bugs enough in many localities to do much harm, if the climatic conditions are favorable, and, as we have noway of knowing when a chinch-bug year is coming until it is upon us, it is exceedingly important that some systematic method of combating this evil be fixed upon by the farming communities.