The more mechanical application of electricity to a number of
farm processes is in a much more advanced state. To give one, perhaps, minor example, the influence of light, and sometimes graded light, on the health and laying capacity of poultry is proved, though the force and duration of this artificial light are still in question. You may milk, thresh, clip, chaff-cut, and even plough by electricity ; and self-extinguishing lights can be contrived. An electric farm, organized and worked by an electrical expert, is an astonishing spectacle : the apparatus seems to solve all the farmer's troubles (except the poor price for his products) ; but few farmers are electrical experts or likely to be. What is wanted is a demonstration of the uses, the fool-proof uses, if farmers will forgive the phrase, of electricity on the common or garden holding. They are many and important ; and it is on these that special emphasis will be laid at Rothamsted, at the same time that more strictly scientific research-work on behalf of a dim future is being progressively organized. It is a wise and statesmanlike act to set this demonstration going 'at the date when electric light and power are coming to the neigh- bourhood of every farm in the country. One hopes that it may persuade some of the electric utility companies to spend more money and thought in extending the cables to remoter places. How different in this regard is the policy, for instance, in Herefordshire and Hertfordshire ! Rothamsted happens to be on the edge of Bedfordshire, where the most promising of all the schemes for giving cheap electricity to country districts is under experiment.
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