COUNTRY LIFE
Science and the Farm That greatest of all agricultural stations, Rottamsted, near Harpenden, enjoyed its annual function this week with that ardent and expert husbandman, Lord Bledisloe, as chief visitor. He has just come back from New Zealand and has doubtless been interested in the latest of the Rothamsted contributions to the balance of nature in those delectable islands. Rothamsted has bred and sent out in their millions classes of insects that make it their business to harry the blackberry and the gorse, both of which (like the sweet-briar in Tasmania) have proved pernicioui weeds. It happens that the gorse weevil was so numerous close to Rothamsted last year that on one common thick with gorse I failed to collect a score of seeds. Almost every pod was a weevil stable. I hear that the insects are working hard in their new environment. It was at Rothamsted, years ago, that I first learned that when the domestic sponge becomes in any degree sticky, the fault is a fungus ; and strange dis- coveries in the department of mycology have been made at Rothamsted this year. One soil fungus and one fungus found in milk effluents appear to possess the quantity of both holding and giving out sweet perfumes. It is remarkable how often the serious research worker makes his discoveries outside the main object of his enquiry. How many dis- coveries are chips from the workshop, are examples of unearned increment, are, so to say, accidents, or at any rate accidentals.
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