CORRESPONDENCE 299 



of bacteria to any person or persons nominated by the Board 

 of Agriculture." 



On August 21 the King's College authorities received an 

 intimation that a grant of £150 — £100 towards my assistant's 

 salary and £50 for apparatus — had been sanctioned " in aid of 

 research on soil bacteria and the probable accessory food 

 substances in bacterised peat." 



Surely in view of these circumstances I was justified in 

 stating that the Board of Agriculture had refused to make a 

 grant for experiments with bacterised peat. 



I have never made the admission " that no experiments on 

 a commercial scale have been carried out successfully." On 

 the contrary, I maintain that the value of bacterised peat for 

 horticulture has been proved on a commercial scale in numerous 

 nurseries and market gardens during the last three years. 

 Could one require better testimony on this point than that given 

 by Mr. Watson, the curator of Kew Gardens, in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, October 30, 191 5? After experimenting with 

 bacterised peat for three years Mr. Watson writes : "I have 

 not seen a single case of failure where plants treated with 

 humogen (bacterised peat) have had ordinary attention. . . . 

 In a properly constituted soil humogen is capable of working a 

 change in its productivity which, after a long experience with 

 plant soils and plant foods, I am in a position to say is very 

 extraordinary. I have never seen anything to equal it." 



One wonders why Sir Sydney Olivier did not mention in his 

 letter these results of the experiments made at Kew, " which," 

 as he says, " is under the Board's control." Is it because he 

 attaches more importance to " the doubts that many of my 

 scientific colleagues still maintain as to the value of my dis- 

 covery " than to the results of three years' investigation at Kew ? 



I am rather surprised to find that Sir Sydney Olivier con- 

 siders that the results of the Wisley experiments afford evidence 

 " that there is still room for doubt whether bacterised peat can 

 be used agriculturally on a commercial scale." This is evidently 

 not the opinion of Mr. Chittenden, who conducted the experi- 

 ments, for in the " summary and conclusions " of his report he 

 definitely states : " The results on the whole show that when 

 prepared under the best conditions bacterised peat is capable 

 of acting as a very effective manure." 



Profs. Wood and Biffen, after criticising the experiments 



