CORRESPONDENCE 655 



has been tried on four important farm crops ; barley, potatoes, 

 mangolds, and wheat. The trials on barley are described as 

 " very promising." They consisted of laboratory tests only, 

 and the facts emphasised are that the treated plants were more 

 deeply coloured, and tillered more freely, than the controls. 

 If these results hold in the field, the use of bacterised peat may 

 confidently be expected to ruin the barley crop, for high nitrogen 

 content as indicated by the deep green colour, and the uneven 

 ripening caused by abundant tillering, are the last features a 

 practical man wishes to see in his barley. 



The experiments with potatoes have the advantage that 

 they were made in the open field, but on land which had not 

 been under cultivation for nine years. The yields from plots 

 treated with bacterised peat are compared with those from 

 plots treated with farmyard manure and with artificial manures, 

 and with the yield from the untreated soil. Bacterised peat is 

 credited with having produced large increases, but it is quite 

 impossible to form any judgment of the value of the results, 

 as all details as to size or number of plots, or quantities of 

 manures, are ignored. 



In an appendix, however, a more detailed account is given, 

 apparently of this experiment, from which it appears that the 

 results recorded were obtained by weighing the produce of single 

 plots each of about T ^ acre. The dressing of bacterised peat 

 was 9 oz. per square yard, which is approximately ij tons 

 per acre, the cost of which is consequently about £12 per acre. 



The appendix also records under the heading " Results of 

 which less exact details are available " that the produce of a 

 row of mangolds 9 yards long was increased by 50 per cent, by 

 treatment with an unspecified amount of bacterised peat. 



The trials with wheat are still more inconclusive. They 

 were made on market garden soil, obviously unsuited for the 

 purpose, for even the control plots were so badly " lodged " 

 that harvesting was impossible. The one fact they appear to 

 establish is that the use of bacterised peat resulted in a highly 

 undesirable increase of growth in straw and foliage. 



Further study of this chapter and the appendix leaves little 

 doubt that if more conclusive evidence of the benefits which 

 bacterised peat can confer on the farmer had been available it 

 would not have been omitted. Yet on this inconceivably 

 flimsy foundation, statements are made that our food supply 



