302 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



obtained in horticulture be extended to agriculture, especially 

 in the direction of enhancing the productivity of poor land ? 

 A poor starved soil must be supplied with humus to render it 

 fertile, and in peat bogs we have an unlimited supply of in- 

 soluble humus which can be rendered available by bacterial 

 treatment. The practical bearing of bacterised peat on crop 

 production rests on a much surer foundation than " a few 

 haphazard trials carried out under unsuitable conditions by 

 experimenters who do not possess sufficient acquaintance with 

 farming to enable them to interpret the meaning of their own 

 results." Three years' experiments at Kew Gardens have 

 shown that bacterised peat contains certain organic growth- 

 promoting substances. Water cultures with a water plant, 

 Lemna minor, have demonstrated that the presence of these 

 substances is necessary for the assimilation of nitrates, phos- 

 phates, and potash. This theory of plant accessory food 

 substances is so important from both scientific and practical 

 standpoints that it is now being further tested in an extended 

 series of experiments at the Imperial College of Science and 

 Technology, South Kensington. One welcomes the valuable 

 assistance of such experiments, and it is difficult to understand 

 the attitude of certain scientists who condemn the work of 

 other investigators without even taking the trouble to ascertain 

 its true nature. 



I can assure Profs. Wood and Biffen that my object is 

 neither to exploit the farmer nor to handicap " the efforts now 

 being made by a considerable body of scientific men throughout 

 the country to improve the position of British agriculture." 

 British horticulture and agriculture are at present handicapped 

 by a serious shortage of stable manure, and it is on the problem 

 of finding an efficient substitute for this material that I have 

 been working for the last few years. That bacterised peat 

 may provide such a substitute is the opinion of most of those 

 who have personally experimented with it, and one might 

 have expected that my attempts to solve this problem would 

 have met with sympathetic assistance rather than hostile and 

 destructive criticism from some of those who profess to have 

 the interests of British agriculture at heart. 



W. B. BOTTOMLEY. 

 Botanical Laboratories, 



King's College, London, 

 May 31, 1916. 



