Vol. si. No. 261. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



137 



Trials of the Soy Bean in England. 



As is well known, the soy bean is a tropical and sub- 

 tropical plant, and may be grown with a certain amount 

 of success in the warm temperate zone. In view of the 

 ;act, interest is aroused in trials with this plant that 

 have been made in England, and are described in the 

 Journal of the Snuili Eastern Agricultural College, 

 Wye, 1910, page 31.S. 



The experiments were conducted with seed ob- 

 tained from the United States, which was sown in 

 a chalky loam. The plants grew well, and produced 

 a small amount of seed; later on they turned yelhiw. 

 It was found that the roots of these 'plants did not 

 pcssess any nodules. 



Other seeds of the plant were sown in pots, the 

 soil in half of these being treated with soil in which soy 

 beans had grown, in the United States; while that in 

 the other pots did not receive any aridition of such soil. 

 In the former case, the plants that were obtained grew 

 well, and nodules were produced in large numbers on 

 their roots. The results with the plants in the pots 

 containing untreated soil were similar to those obtained 

 in the field. 



It is concluded from these trials that the soy bean 

 m.aj" be grown in England, but that in land where it 

 has not been present before, inoculation a necessary. 



School Gardecs in Great Britain. 



As is the case m other countrie.s where attention 

 is being given to agricultural education, the usefulness 

 of the school garden as an aid to nature study is well 

 recognized in Great Britain. The subject receives 

 attention in The Report of the Board of Education for 

 1910-11, issued recently, and the following interesting 

 matter is taken from the section of that report dealing 

 with school gardens in elementary schools: — 



' Closely connected with the growth of interest in 

 nature study is the subject of school gardens. How 

 great has been the increase in the number of schools 

 where gardening is taught since 1902 can be gathered 

 from the following comparison: In 1002 gardening was 

 taught in 389 schools, and the total number of boys 

 on whom grant was paid was -1,3.59. In the year 1909-10 

 the subject was taught in 2,014 schools, and grant was 

 earned by 811 girls and 28,948 boys. The subject is 

 taught in practically every county area in England, 

 and in all but two in Wales. 



' In all school gardens, with hardly an exception, 

 the cultivation of vegetables is the main feature: in 

 some a special point is made of fruit and flower grow- 

 ing. The practical work is organized in various ways. 

 In one school each child will culti\ate a separate plot 

 cf ground: in another two children will work together 

 at each plot: often a boy in his second year of instruc- 

 tion will be put to work with a beginner; in a third 

 school the whole class is jointly responsible for the 

 garden. Sometimes there is a "common plot", in which 

 ^'xperiments are shown and special operations carried 

 out, such as fruit-budding, grafting, spraying, the use 



of artificial manures, 'thick and thin" sowing. Through- 

 out the year the work in the gardens and the work in 

 the school are closely associated. The platits whose 

 life-history is to be studied in the class-room are grown 

 in the garden, the habits of caterpillars and other pests 

 are illustrated, i>ften with distressing clearness, by the 

 damage they do among the children's plots: calcu- 

 lations as to quantities of seeds and crops make 

 admirable exercises in arithmetic; children draw the 

 gardens to scale and paint and model from the fruits 

 and flowers which they have themselves grow'n. These 

 drawings and paintings form a useful record of what has 

 been done from year to year.' 



The Leaf Green of Plants and the Building up of 



Food Bodies in the Leaf 



It is a matter of common knowledge that the 

 possession of what is broadly described as green colour- 

 ing matter (chlorophyll) b}- leaves is connected inti- 

 mately with their power to employ carbon dioxide from 

 the air, and water from the roots, in the building up of 

 more complex bodies that are employed as plant food. 

 Work has been undertaken b_v a Russian investigator, 

 among others, in order to find out the relation between 

 the amount of chlorojjhyll possessed by a given kind of 

 leaf and its power to build up food bodies. This re- 

 ceives attention in an abstract that appears in the 

 Experiment Station liecord, Vol. XXIV, page 718. 



It was found that the work of the leaf commences 

 as soon as light begins to be absorbed, provided that 

 a miniiuiim of chlorophyll is present already, and the 

 greater the amount of chlorophyll the less is the quan- 

 tity of light required. The energy of the building up 

 process is said to increase with the amount of chloro- 

 phyll, up to a maximum attained only in young leaves; 

 in older leaves the quantity of chlorophyll present is in 

 excess of that which can be employed for absorption in 

 bright light. The effect of too strong light is to cause 

 the energy of food-building to diminish. 



The greatest action of leaves, as 'regards the decom- 

 position of carbon dioxide, takes place in red light, and 

 the smallest in green light. The ojiposite is the case 

 in regard to the production of dry matter. A considera- 

 tion of the phenomena observed indicates that there are 

 two stages in the process of food-building in the leaf: 

 the first is characterized by the breaking up of carbon 

 aioxide and the second by actions taking ]ilace through 

 the influence of light which are connected with the 

 transportation and utilization of material that has been 

 built up already. 



The work has afforded other results that are equal 

 in interest to those just given, though there is not avail- 

 able space to detail them completely. Mention maybe 

 made, however, of one of theiu, which consists iu the 

 fact that two physiological types may be recognized 

 among plants, namely those which produce little chloro- 

 phyll and require much light; and those in which large 

 quantities of chlorophyll are formed, so that they are 

 able to grow in compxratively feeble illumination. 



