60 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OF THE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 



manner as to interfere as little as "possible with the aeration 

 of the soil. 



Confirmatory evidence of the importance of soil aeration 

 in agriculture has been abundant in the recent literature. 

 Experiments are in progress on this subject in India and 

 other countries and a large number of further papers are 

 expected to appear during the next two or three years. The 

 opportunity was taken of the 1918 meeting of the Indian 

 Science Congress at Lahore to place on record a statement 

 of the present position of the investigations on soil aeration. 

 This was done in the form of a joint lecture (with Mr. R. S. 

 Hole, 1 Forest Botanist at Dehra Dun) to the whole 

 Congress on January 9th last immediately after the presi- 

 dential address. Mr. R. G. Allan, Principal of the Nagpur 

 Agricultural College, supplemented the lecture by an 

 account of his results on sub-soil aeration on the black soils. 

 The lecture has since been published in full in the May issue 

 of the Indian Forester and in the July issue of the A gricul- 

 tural Journal of India- In the Botanical Section of the 

 Science Congress, other papers on soil aeration were read 

 and discussed including one by Mr. Clouston, Officiating 

 Director of Agriculture of the Central Provinces, and 

 Mr. A. R. Padmanabha Aiyer, Officiating Agricultural 

 Chemist, Central Provinces, on the results obtained on thg 

 poor laterite soils (bhata) at Chandkhuri near Raipur. 

 Hitherto, these soils (of which there are millions of acres now 

 lying practically waste or in jungle) have only borne occa- 

 sional crops of inferior millets in the rains and have been 

 considered useless for agricultural purposes. In reality, 

 however, they possess in their porosity and good drainage, 

 enormous potentialities which Mr. Clouston is now develop- 

 ing. The aeration of the bhata soils is perfect and with the 

 addition of organic manure and irrigation water very fine 

 crops of cotton, indigo, groundnuts, sugarcane and various 

 fodders have been obtained. One feature of these crops is 



1 Mr. Hole's investigations on soil aeration deal with the importance of this 

 factor in various forestry and ecological problems. His conclusions have been 

 arrived at largely from physiological experiments and agree with our own on the 

 importance of the soil aeration factor in pla'it growth. 



