Dec. 1904.] | BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 51 
When he entered on the work, under the science depart- 
ment of the Highland and Agricultural Society, he was 
already known to most of the members of that department ; 
and his genial kindly manner, his ready humour and witty 
asides, soon made him the fast friend of all; while his 
enthusiasm, power of work, and splendid capacity for 
organisation, carried the department forward till it was 
the leading Agricultural Experimenting Institution in this 
country. Many of the deductions from the experiments 
then conducted, as reported on by Dr. Aitken in the 
“Transactions” of the Highland and Agricultural Society, 
are monuments of his power of mastering detail, and his 
facility for racy, clear, and succinct expression. As chemist 
to the Society, he had the control of experimenting work 
undertaken by the Society, which took two forms—first, 
on stations farmed for the time by the Society; second, on 
plots on various farms all over the country, whenever farmers 
were willing to take the trouble to conduct experiments. 
The first consisted of (a) a field at Harelaw, near Long- 
niddry, in East Lothian ; and (4) a field at Pumpherston, 
West Lothian. The former was soon given up, as the soil 
was found to be in too high a state of cultivation to give 
the minute results required. The Pumpherston station was 
kept on for seven years; and the reports of the cropping and 
manuring on that station are most interesting and instructive, 
aud are being corroborated every year by experiments in 
other parts, though they were then only partially understood, 
and were, from a scientific point of view, considerably in 
advance of the time. We have, however, travelled a good 
way since then. Many of Dr. Aitken’s conclusions at that 
time are being now paraded by other workers as the results 
of original investigation. 
The second part of Dr. Aitken’s experimental work 
consisted in organising and reporting on the various 
experiments of a local character conducted all over the 
country from Caithness to Wigtownshire. These, up to the 
time of the doctor’s lamented death, numbered twenty-five 
(specially scheduled and detailed), besides numerous lesser 
experiments, and each was conducted by probably an average 
of twenty to thirty farmers, many of them being carried on 
for a series of years, entailing visits, weighings, reports, ete. 
