NA TURE 



289 



THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1893. 



THE ROTHAMSTED JUBILEE. 



ON Saturday next a large gathering of scientific men 

 will assemble in the village of Harpenden to do 

 honour to two investigators who have just completed fifty 

 years of joint labour. 



The occasion is unique. It can have happened but 

 seldom that two men have continued their joint scientific 

 investigations for a period like the present ; but there are 

 other circumstances, apart from this, which mark the 

 event about to be celebrated as one of exceptional interest. 

 The Rothamsted agricultural experiments are indeed a 

 piece of work of which England may well be proud. 

 They form a splendid example of what is sometimes 

 accomplished amongst us by purely individual effort. 

 The extensive series of costly experiments, carried out 

 on a large scale both in the field and in the laboratory, 

 and with results of national importance, has been main- 

 tained for more than fifty years at the sole expense of one 

 man. Nor is this all. Sir J. B. Lawes has made pro- 

 vision for the continuance of these investigations. The 

 laboratory and the experimental fields, with /^ioo,ooo, 

 have been placed in the hands of trustees, and the future 

 management of the investigations has been entrusted to 

 a committee, the members of which are elected by various 

 scientific societies. 



But it is not only as a striking example of individual 

 zeal and munificence that the Rothamsted agricultural 

 station is remarkable, it is equally so if we regard the 

 character of the work performed. Many of the most im- 

 portant problems connected with agriculture can only be 

 satisfactorily studied by actual experiments in the field ; 

 such experiments require to be carried out on a large 

 scale and continued for many years. Boussingault was, 

 we believe, the first who sought to ascertain the chemical 

 statistics of agriculture by a quantitative examination of 

 the actual crops of the farm, and by a study of the con- 

 stituents of soil, of manure, and of rain-water — the various 

 factors which determine the amount of the harvest. But 

 if the work of Boussingault stands first in order of time, 

 the work of Lawes and Gilbert at Rothamsted immedi- 

 ately follows it, and has been continued for such a much 

 longer series of years, and developed in so many new 

 branches of inquiry, that it is to Rothamsted that the 

 agriculturist has long looked for information concerning 

 the fundamental facts of agricultural chemistry. 



The field experiments at Rothamsted are peculiar to 

 the place ; in very few of the now numerous agricultural 

 stations in foreign countries has systematic work of this 

 kind been attempted ; in none has the work been so 

 extensive and so long continued. No less peculiar to 

 Rothamsted has been the laborious investigation into the 

 composition of oxen, sheep, and pigs in various sta<'es 

 of fattening, and into the chemistry of the fattening pro- 

 cess. Of the laboratory investigations we may mention 

 the more recent inquiry into the causes and conditions 

 of the production of nitrates in soil, and respecting the 

 quantity of nitric nitrogen in soils of various history, 

 and in drainage and well waters. But we must not here 

 NO. 1239, VOL. 48] 



attempt an enumeration of published Rothamsted work, 

 which, according to the last report, has furnished the- 

 matter for 125 papers. 



Rothamsted is by much the oldest of existing agri- 

 cultural stations. The earliest German experimental 

 station was founded in 1852, the earliest in the United 

 States in 1875. The first agricultural experiments of 

 Mr. Lawes seems to have been made in 1837 ; in this 

 and the two following years he tried numerous experi- 

 ments on farm crops grown in pots. His trials in the 

 field commenced in 1840. In 1843 he was fortunate in 

 securing the services of Dr.* J. H. Gilbert, a former pupil 

 of Liebig's, who henceforth took the superintendence of 

 the chemical part of the investigations. Dr. Gilbert has 

 devoted his life to the conduct of the Rothamsted experi- 

 ments, and the valuable results which have been obtained 

 are largely due to his untiring energy, and to the method 

 and order which his character has impressed upon the 

 work. The jubilee to be celebrated this week is reckoned 

 from the year when Dr. Gilbert began to take a share in 

 the work ; the same year also saw the first of the 

 experimental wheat crops sown in Broadbalk Field, 

 which, at the present time, bears its fiftieth suc- 

 cessive crop, having grown wheat without intermission 

 during half a century. Numerous honours have been con- 

 ferred on Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert in the course of 

 their long career. Our Universities have bestowed on 

 them degrees. The Royal Society in 1867 awarded 

 them a royal medal. The Society of Arts has during 

 the current year decided to present them with its Albert 

 Medal. Foreign societies and academies have elected 

 them members of their body. In 1882 Mr. Lawes re- 

 ceived a baronetcy from the Queen. 



The jubilee commemoration of the present week took 

 its rise at a meeting held in the rooms of tlie Royal 

 Agricultural Society on March i, the Prince of Wales 

 occupying the chair. A committee of distinguished men, 

 with the Duke of Westminster as chairman, and Mr. 

 Ernest Clarke, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, as secretary, was appointed to carry out the 

 scheme. The celebration on Saturday will consist, as 

 the readers of Nature are already aware, in the un- 

 veiling of a granite memorial erected in front of the 

 laboratory ; in the presentation of congratulatory ad- 

 dresses to Sir J. B. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert ; and in the 

 presentation to Sir J. B. Lawes of his portrait, by Hubert 

 Herkomer, R.A. It is hoped that the Right Hon. 

 Herbert Gardner, M.P., the Minister for Agriculture, 

 will preside. 



The laboratory, in front of which the celebration is to 

 take place, is itself a testimony to the appreciation with 

 which the labours of Lawes and Gilbert have been 

 regarded. It is not the laboratory originally employed in 

 the early years of the experiments ; this was a barn which 

 had been fitted up for chemical work, and has long a^o 

 been pulled down. The present laboratory was built and 

 presented to Sir J. B. Lawes in 1855 by a number of 

 agriculturists, at a time when agriculture was a more 

 profitable pursuit than it is at present. Since then the 

 needs of the work have grown, and a large storehouse 

 for soil and crop samples has been erected by the side of 

 the new laboratory. 



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