A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 181 



seven feet high, growing in borders which, well 

 manured five years previously, had not subsequently 

 received a single ounce. I begged him therefore to 

 tell me whence these plants got their needful 

 nitrogen. Whilst this storm was blowing, I asked 

 my oldest living friend and schoolfellow, Professor 

 Gilbert, the distinguished colleague of Sir John Lawes, 

 how long a soil thus well manured would retain 

 traces of it. He replied " For fifteen years." This 

 knocked on the head the washing-out theory of the 

 farmers. The address certainly made a sensation, 

 and I received an application for a copy of it from 

 the editor of the leading agricultural newspaper in the 

 northern half of Scotland, who republished it verbatim. 

 A similar application reached me from the south of 

 the Thames. 



Between the years 1823 and 1881 a copious 

 literature was produced on a subject of considerable 

 scientific interest. Certain peculiar objects had been 

 found in the strata of various ages, respecting which 

 great differences of opinion existed. My friend, Dr. 

 Nathorst, of Stockholm, published a memoir in 1881, 

 in which he supplied a bibliography containing no 

 fewer than 130 writers who had written on the above 

 objects during the previous sixty years. 



The question at issue was the real nature of the 

 fossilised specimens just referred to. The greater 

 number of the above writers regarded them as fossil 

 Fucoids. 



This was especially the case with another of my 



