ROTHAMSTED.• Tog Rothamsted Experimental Station is an outstanding example of
the enormous national work'which can be done by one man who will devote his life, and such moderate fortune as he may acquire in business, to the carrying out of a single definite project. Sir John Bennet Lewes inherited the estate of Rothamsted, interested himself in the scientific study of agriculture, rondo a few hundred thousand pounds out of his manufactory of chemical manure., set aside RothMnsted as an experimental station, endowed it for continuing its researches after his death, and lives immortal in his work. With Lewes became associated Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert, a chemist of distinction. The two men came together in 1843, and since then the experiments at Rothamsted, which are world-famous, have been carried on continuously. Rothamsted has become the Mecca of scientific agriculturists, and Lewes is its Mehemet.
A very largo literature has grown up around the Rothamsted Experiments, most of it hidden from the public in the Transactions of scientific societies ; but thanks first to Dr. Fream—for long the Agricultural Correspondent of the Timm—and afterwards to Mr. A. D. Hall, who was for ten years Director of the Station, the work done there has been explained and made intelligible to a wide circle. No time could be more appropriate than the present for a revised edition of Mr. Hall'. book, which was first published in November, 1903. It has been brought up to date by his successor not Rotham- sted, Mr. E. J. Russell, and additional chapters have been contri- buted by both authors. We are faced with a world shortage of food. we are eager to leant how the most may be made of the land of our own country—other nations are not leas eager to make the most of their land—and we could not have more valuable data put before us than may be gathered from the expert study of the Rothamsted Experiments. They are a shining example of the manner in which scientific research directed without regard to narrow economio considerations may yet come to servo a most valuable economic purpose.
What Mr. A. D. Hall set himself with conspicuous Access to do was to interpret the results of the Rothamsted Experiments in terms which would not only give their broad scientific meaning, but would make their purport and the lessons to bo derived from them intelligible to an ordinary non-scientific man. He wisely did not attempt to reject all scientific language—to have done that would have involved a serious loss of accuracy and defmiteneas. But he has kept clear of the terrible jargon which defaces so many works by men of science, and has used only those technical agricultural, chemical. and biological terms which are nowadays—or ought to be—part of the equipment of every decently instructed man. We live in an age of very rapid development in all branches of science, and in order to follow their progress we must acquaint ourselves at least with the elements of their technology. It is am important, for example, for every one to know the difference between free and fixed nitrogen sin it is to know the difference between an engine driven by petrol or heavy oil and one which is operated by the expansive power of steam. It was, wo believe, Mr. H. G. Wells who observed that the only men who had anything new to say were scientific workers, and that those were the only men who did not know how to say it. Readers of this book need have no fear lest the authors should be in Mr. Wells's category of the scientific workers who are denied the gift of °spree- sion. Mr. A. D. Hall's accurate lucidity is well known, and in Mr. E. J. Russell he has a successor and colleague of the same quality.
One is greatly struck with the respectful, even admiring, attitude of these two highly competent writers, not only towards the work done in the past by Limes and Gilbert, but towards that which has been carried on since. The Rothamsted Experiment. have yielded a whole library of papers, and yet Mr. Russell /Jaye that we have not learnt anything like all the lessons the Rothamsted fields can teach us. He hopes that " when conditions become more normal it will be possible CO arrange for a proper statistical survey of the mass of valuable data accumulated at Rothamsted. Tho greatest pains are taken to ensure the reliability of the data, and I cannot help thinking that the application of thorn to modern statistical methods would yield information of high value both to the man of science and to the practical agriculturist." We may fairly judge from the manner in which Mr. Russell hoe supplemented the work of Mr. Hall that the arrangements for such a statistical survey, if it be undertaken under his guidance, will be in thoroughly com potent hands.
Time is of the emence of scientific research, it cannot be hurried, and at Rothamsted there is an almost Oriental indifference to the trammels of time. Rothamsted has been at work continuously since 1843, and some of the experiments begun over sixty years ago are being carried on to-clay in the same plots. That is the strength of Rothamsted. Here aro record. of growth under cond t ions of manuring
• The Roos el the Rahamated Experiment.. By A. D. R.11, M.A. Muni). ERA., late Director of the Rothanuird Eaperintental first Principal of the Booth- Eaatern Agricultural Callrge, now kw.etary of the Board of Agriculture. serene Edition, Revised by E. J. Ruseell. D.Sc., F.H.B., Director of the Holhausated Experi- mental station. Issued alth the Anthority of the LIMB Agricultural Weal Conn. Inittce. Leaden John Menai,. Ito& 0d. seta and non-manuring carried on without break, records of analyses of soil, of the effects of various manures, analyses of drainage water. Everything which.goes to show how plants grow and are nourished, and what happens to them under the most varied conditions, is sought out, analysed, and classified. Take what is perhaps the beet-known example, though it is one among many. Take the wheat- field. We have in this book the record of the growth of wheat upon nineteen plots each of half-an-acre extending over sixty-one years ! Each plot has been manured in a particular way except one plot, which has never been manured at all throughout all those years. The produce of grain and straw per acre from those plots has each year been calculated, and we get a complete record of the conduct of the wheat-plant under the varied conditions. Mr. Hall shows us exactly what happens to the plant and to the soil, and draws prac- tical conclusions in a form which can be apprehended almost at a glance. So with barley and root crops, with potatoes, beans,-clover, and grass. The experiments may not always have continued for as long as for wheat, but the method of research is the same. The plants are stripped naked of mysteries and compelled to give up their secrete to the patient investigators.
A chapter by Mr. Russell with the rather forbidding title of " The Recent Work on the Biochemical Processes of the Soil " has the interest of a romance. It shows how Rothamated discovered—fast by a happy accident and afterwards by definite inquiry—that there are micro-organisms in the soil, some of which are beneficial and some harmful. Roughly speaking, the bacteria by whose agency the free nitrogen of the air is fixed and becomes available for plant food are beneficial, while the protozoa which destroy the bacteria are in this way lmrmful. The happy accident was the discovery that ; a partial sterilization of the soil will kill the harmful protozoa, while leaving the bacteria alive to carry on their beneficent activities. We, most apologize to Mr. Russell for putting his cautious conclusions into this rather crude form, but broadly what he is trying to do is to find out a practicable method of eliminating the harmful agents and of giving full scope to those which are beneficial. One can do much in a greenhouse which is not a " business proposition "-in an open field, but one may feel some confidence that Rothamated, having found what appears to be the key to the problem of bacterial agency, in soils, will proceed to throw wide the door.
It is not possible in a brief survey to give a just idea of the roam of valuable material contained in this most fascinating book. It should be studied in detail by all those who own and work land— even an allotmentholder may learn much of the food requirements of his potatoes. It is a book easy to understand even by those who have no practical acquaintance with either agriculture or chemistry. And it will come as a revelation to those who may still believe that the oldest industry in the world—slid nbt Adam cultivate his garden f—ie just a happy-go-lucky business of turning over the ground and sticking in seeds. Very much more may be got out of the land of the world than is at present grown upon it, and Rothamsted points the way to the greater production of the future. What seems to us the most startling sentence in the whole book is the casual remark of Mr. Hall on p. 41 that the continuously un. ',tenured wheat-plot at Rothameted has by cultivation alone been able to grow for sixty years a crop averaging thirteen bushels to the acre. He adds : " This is almost the average crop produced in the United States, and is very similar to the general average production of the great wheat.growing areas of the world." Merely by deep ploughing and the suppression of weeds this =Immured plot on average soil, in our centuries-old England has yielded for two generations welarge a crop as have the virgin wheat-growing areas of the world. In this one fact there is a whole volume of significance.
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