PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 7 



the necessary labour in harvesting, which has made the cost 

 too high; otherwise it should form a profitable crop. Another 

 industry to which much attention has been drawn is that of 

 Forestry, which it is proposed to carry on with Government 

 help, as the results involve many years in which there is no 

 return, though when the trees once begin to mature there will 

 doubtless be a regular annual profit. In the Agricultural 

 Section the President called attention to the fact that during 

 the war more than 3,000,000 acres of grass land were turned 

 into arable, leaving still about 30,000,000 acres of pasture, 

 besides 16,000,000 acres of mountain pasture. The relative 

 feeding values of different species of grasses constituting a 

 pasture had only been very partially determined; but he put 

 forward strongly the statement that phosphates, in the form of 

 basic slag, were by far the best known means of improving poor 

 grazing land, and very lasting in their effects. In Italy nitrate 

 of ammonia has been extracted from surplus explosives, and 

 found very good as a fertilizer. A paper of local interest at 

 the British Association dealt with the Orchids of Hants and 

 Dorset. Another described the desert flora of Western Egypt 

 near Cairo, where the Author had been stationed during the 

 war, the remaining papers being mostly of a more theoretical 

 nature. A method of irrigation for fruit trees which has long 

 been used in Sicily, and which, though perhaps not necessary 

 in most places in this country, is said to save half the water in 

 arid climates, is to insert drainpipes vertically in the soil above 

 the roots on a foundation of brick bats or loose stones and 

 pour the water down them. This method could doubtless be 

 used with advantage for applying liquid fertilizers. 



GEOLOGY. 



The borings for petroleum which have recently been under- 

 taken in this country are not yet in a sufficiently advanced 

 condition to speak decidedly as to their successful issue, though 

 some of them have produced a certain quantity of oil, especially 

 a boring near Chesterfield which is nearer completion than the 





