I go 



NATURE 



June 26, 1879 



the influence of the scientific method upon the agricul- 

 tural art. 



Anlaysis of soils has not answered the questions put by 

 its means exactly as we expected. But it has frequently 

 shown U3 why, through excess or defect of some ingredient, 

 certain lands were barren, and it has taught us how 

 cheaply and thoroughly to remedy their sterility. Excess 

 of decaying organic matter, of soluble salts, or the pre- 

 sence of ferrous salts, or of iron pyrites, these have been 

 recognised amongst the curable ills of our soils. What is 

 known as the coagttlation of clay is now understood, so 

 that we can often bring it about and thus render heavy 

 lands workable at our will. The relations between the 

 fungi inimical to our cultivated plants and the constituents 

 of our soils being known we can now fight more hopefully 

 against blight and mildew. What kind of exhaustion of 

 soil is to be feared and how it can be remedied is now 

 within our knowledge. 



The development of the industry of artificial manures 

 has been a very marked feature of the whole period of 

 forty years during which our great Agricultural Society 

 has been in existence. Farmyard manure has been rele- 

 gated to its true place — no mean one, but one which has 

 no longer the importance once attached to it. As 100 

 tons of ordinary dung and litter do not contain more than 

 I ton (often less) of real manurial substance — potash, 

 nitrogen, phosphorus pentoxide— one hundredweight of 

 guano may frequently replace with advantage the usual 

 dressing of farmyard manure applied to an acre. But 

 while chemistry has searched out the constituents of 

 manures, and recognised and determined the elements of 

 fertility scattered in minerals and guano and waste pro- 

 ducts throughout the world, and shown how to bring all 

 plant food into available forms, it has had also to carry 

 on a perpetual warfare with the bands of adulterators, 

 perfecting its methods of detecting the falsification of the 

 materials which it has itself introduced ; for manures are 

 difficult to test by mere inspection, often being merely 

 "-dirts with a strong smell." 



The improvement of existing varieties of plants by 

 artificial selection has been carried to great perfection in 

 many instances — the sugar-beet and wheat being notable 

 examples. The introduction and improvement of new 

 plants, both for cattle food and for the sustenance of 

 man, is a work in which much remains to be done. 

 Especially should attention be directed to those crops 

 upon which lesser, but in many cases more, remunerative 

 industries than mere corn-growing may be founded. 

 Plants yielding products useful in medicine, dyeing, and 

 perfumery, should not be neglected. Some districts on 

 the Continent, such as the neighbourhood of Florence, 

 have been immensely benefited in every way by the in- 

 troduction of minor crops with their attendant indus- 

 tries ; similar successes may be repeated where skill and 

 capital are available, climate and soil being of course 

 taken into account. 



Of improvement in the breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, 

 and pigs, nowhere can be found better illustrations than 

 in England : we shall soon see how much our neighbours 

 and friends abroad have gained from our work in this 

 direction. In agricultural machinery and implements the 

 same statement may be made with still greater emphasis : 

 it is indeed curious to note how in every text-book of 



agriculture, in every farmer's journal, and rural adver- 

 tisement published in France, Germany, Italy, and in 

 most other countries both of the Old World and the New, 

 the familiar names of Howard, and Fowler, and Cam- 

 bridge, and Aveling, meet us on plough, and roUer, and 

 harrow, and engine. Perhaps in the after-treatment of 

 some kinds of ordinary farm produce, we have been 

 behind our Continental neighbours and American cousins, 

 but we arc beginning to appreciate better the aids that 

 science can render to cheese and butter-making, and to 

 the preparation of mill-products from wheat. The 

 critical study of milk and dairy processes is securing the 

 attention of dairy-farmers in England ; while such an 

 invention as Wegmann's porcelain cyhnder for miUing 

 wheat has revolutionised the old grinding process already. 



Of progress in the agricultural education either of 

 farmers or farm-labourers, we have little to boast. Our 

 solitary Agricultural College at Cirencester has been ever 

 and anon paralysed by mismanagement ; while its charges 

 are too high, owing to the absence of any endowment, for 

 its instruction to be accessible to the sons of ordinary 

 farmers. Agricultural newspapers are neither as cheap 

 nor always as instructive as they should be ; the education 

 in our elementary schools has hardly yet acquired that 

 agricultural bias which in rural districts might be so ad- , . 

 vantageously given to it. Still the Science and Art De- 

 partment has begun a good work by instituting its exa- 

 mination in the principles of agriculture, although its 

 syllabus presupposes that the examinees will have been 

 been fed on far richer and more varied stores of learning 

 than are yet at their disposal. 



This Kilburn Show will then direct our attention to a 

 multiform subject of the greatest national importance at 

 the present crisis. We shall hope to learn much from 

 the exhibits in the eight miles of shedding arranged in 

 due order over more than 100 acres of ground, and to be 

 rewarded with over 13,000/. in prizes. 



THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 



THE Committee of the House of Commons appointed 

 to inquire into the value of the electric light has 

 completed its labours and has issued its report. There is 

 no doubt that the evidence given before it, when pub- 

 lished, will be very useful, and that the report itself is a 

 careful digest of the facts elicited, but it is questionable 

 whether the results of the inquiry, or the conclusions of 

 the Committee, will satisfy any one. Our readers will 

 find in it nothing new. Gas engineers will find in it 

 their extermination calmly contemplated. The gas manu- 

 facturer is told that he has nothing whatever to do with 

 electricity. Gas, and nothing but gas, is his ware. Though 

 he was incorporated to illuminate a city with the then best 

 known illuminant, he is not to touch a newer illuminant 

 because he will check the development of the fresh 

 source of light, and his present mode of production is 

 quite different to that required for the new commodity. It 

 is as though a wine merchant who had a large sale of 

 sherry were not allowed to sell beer, or a dairyman were 

 not allowed to sell asses' milk because he only kept cows. 

 The enunciation of such a proposition in a Parlia- 

 mentary Report is sad. Worse than all, municipal 



