348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



posed to produce a rotation in the swarms, which would give rise 

 to the observed planetary motions. 



Another objection raised by Mr. Monck is, that it seems diffi- 

 cult to understand how the requisite number of collisions in a me- 

 teoric swarm could be produced and kept up, and " that meteor 

 clouds dense enough to produce the requisite amount of light by 

 their collisions would also be dense enough to intercept a great 

 part of it again on its way to the earth." Mr. Monck's papers on 

 the subject were published in the Journal of the Liverpool As- 

 tronomical Society. 



Here the matter rests at present. It will be seen that hitherto 

 the weight of evidence seems against the truth of Lockyer's hy- 

 pothesis, but further researches on the subject will be looked for- 

 ward to with considerable interest. Gentleman's Magazine. 



OUR AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



By Prof. CHARLES LATIIROP PARSONS. 



WHEN, in 1851, a small local society of German tarmers at 

 Mockern, Saxony, realizing that scientific investigation 

 could help solve the many obscure problems of their life, con- 

 tributed from their own resources and asked their Government 

 for aid to establish an experiment station to study such problems, 

 a new epoch was begun in the history of agriculture. The idea 

 that scientific research could be of use in studying and solving 

 the questions related to the farm was by no means a new one. 

 The educated proprietors of Europe were even then beginning to 

 reap the proceeds of chemistry applied to agriculture. The work 

 of Chaptal, Davy, Sprengel, and De Saussure, in the earlier part 

 of the century, had been continued, supplemented, broadened, and 

 enlarged by the great chemist Liebig, whose Chemistry in its 

 Application to Agriculture and Physiology had opened the eyes 

 of many well-known scientists, and given to intelligent farmers a 

 new and brilliant field of labor. 



In 1831 Mr. John Bennet Lawes, since knighted in reward for 

 his labors, began experiments upon fertilization on a small scale. 

 He gradually increased them until 1843, when he associated with 

 himself the now celebrated chemist, Dr. J. H. Gilbert, and from 

 that time he dates the establishment of the Rothamstead Experi- 

 ment Station. Almost coexistent with the first work of Lawes in 

 England, Boussingault began the study of plant physiology and 

 nutrition on his farm and in his private laboratory in Alsatia. 

 Many schools and universities already had zealous workers in 



