THE HISTORY OF AN AGRICULTURAL 

 EXPERIMENT STATION 



By A. D. HALL, M.A., F.R.S. 



The history of an agricultural experiment station which has 

 been in continuous existence for seventy years must be expected 

 to show considerable changes both in the outlook of those 

 conducting the researches and in the opinion of those concerned 

 with the results that have been achieved. 



The Rothamsted Experimental Station dates its formal 

 establishment from 1843. In the period that has since elapsed 

 the whole theory of the nutrition of the plant, the function of 

 manures and the conception of the part played by the soil has 

 taken shape, so that it may not be without interest to trace the 

 successive stages in the development of agricultural science to 

 which the work done at Rothamsted has so largely contributed. 



The late Sir John Bennett Lawes was a small Hertfordshire 

 landlord who came into possession of the property at Rotham- 

 sted, near Harpenden, when a boy and in 1834 at the age of 

 twenty entered upon the management of his home farm. Both 

 at Oxford — where he had attended the lectures of Dr. Daubeny 

 — and in London — where he had made the acquaintance of 

 Dr. A. T. Thomson, author of the Pharmacopoeia — he became 

 interested in chemistry and one of his first steps was to attempt 

 the growing of various drug plants upon the farm. His interest 

 in the science of agriculture was perhaps the most excited by 

 the study of de Saussure's Recherches sur la Vegetation and 

 he began a series of pot experiments with various substances 

 which might possibly be used as fertilisers. It should be 

 remembered that at that time nothing was known of the manurial 

 requirements of a plant ; de Saussure, Davy and others had 

 established the nature of the elements usually to be found within 

 the plant but despite the researches of Priestley and Ingenhousz 

 on the assimilation of carbon dioxide the opinion was still 

 general that a plant derived a large part, if not the whole, of the 



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