Sir John Bennet Lawes. 233 



tributor of short papers to agricultural newspapers and periodicals, 

 both English and American ; he also lectured from time to time to 

 agricultural associations. His writings were always marked by great 

 originality, they were also very practical in character. When bringing 

 forward the results of recent scientific inquiries, he would avoid as far as 

 possible the use of scientific language, and speak as a farmer to farmers. 

 The fertility of the land and its relation to landlord and tenant, and 

 the manure value of foods, with the compensation due to an outgoing 

 tenant for unexhausted manures, were subjects which he made 

 peculiarly his own. For many years he sent annually to the Times 

 newspaper, in the early autumn, an estimate of the quantity of wheat 

 yielded by the preceding harvest in this country. This estimate was 

 based on the produce of the standard plots in the experimental wheat 

 field at Rothamsted ; as the produce here was over or under the aver- 

 age, so it was assumed would be the general produce of the country. 

 The estimates thus made proved generally to be near the truth. 



For his great services to agriculture Mr. Lawes was created a baronet 

 by the Queen in 1882. The degree of LL.D. was conferred on him 

 by the University of Edinburgh in 1877 ; D.C.L. by Oxford in 1893; 

 and Sc.D. by Cambridge in 1894. He received the Legion of Honour 

 from Napoleon III. ; he was also a Chevalier du Merite Agricole. He 

 was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of France in 1879. 

 In 1863, he received a Gold Medal from the Russian Government. In 

 1881, the German Emperor awarded a Gold Meda.1 for Agricultural 

 Merit to Lawes and Gilbert. 



Sir John Lawes early conceived the idea of perpetuating the 

 Rothamsted investigations by placing the laboratory and fields in the 

 hands of trustees with a permanent endowment for their maintenance. 

 He first spoke of this in his speech at the opening of the new laboratory 

 in 1855. In 1872 he publicly announced that he had set aside 100,000 

 for this purpose. By deeds executed by him in February, 1889, the 

 laboratory and experimental fields were leased to Sir John Lubbock > 

 William Wells, Esquire, and Sir John Evans, as trustees, for 99 years at 

 a peppercorn rent. To the same trustees he covenanted to pay the 

 sum of 100,000, the interest on which was to be applied to the 

 maintenance of agricultural investigations under the direction of a 

 Committee of nine persons, of whom four were to be nominated by the 

 Royal Society, two by the Royal Agricultural Society, one by the 

 Linnean Society, and one by the Chemical Society, the owner of 

 Rothamsted being always a member of the Committee. The appoint- 

 ment of new trustees when required was vested in the Royal Society. 

 The Managing Committee were at once appointed. They consisted of 

 Sir John Evans, Dr. Hugo Mil Her, Sir Michael Foster, and Sir W. T. 

 Thiselton Dyer, nominated by the Royal Society ; Sir John H. Thorold, 



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