6 EOTHAMSTED. 



three general assistants. One of these is usually employed 

 in routine chemical work, but sometimes in more general 

 work. The chief occupation of the general assistants is to 

 superintend the field experiments — that is, the making of 

 the manures, the measurement of the plots, the application 

 of the manures, and the harvesting of the crops; also, the 

 taking of samples, the preparation of them for preservation 

 or analysis, and the determinations of dry matter, ash, &c. 

 These assistants also keep the meteorological records, and 

 superintend any experiments made with animals. (3) A 

 botanical assistant has occasionally been employed, with 

 from three to six boys under him ; and with him has been 

 associated one of the permanent general assistants, who at 

 other times undertakes the botanical work. (4) Two or 

 three, latterly four, computers and record-keepers have been 

 occupied in calculating and tabulating field, feeding, and 

 laboratory results, copying, &c. (5) A laboratory man and 

 other helps are also employed. Thus, in addition to a con- 

 siderable number of agricultural labourers, there have usually 

 in recent years been from ten to twelve assistants employed 

 at the Eothamsted Experimental Station. 



Then, besides the permanent laboratory staff resident at 

 Eothamsted, chemical assistance has frequently been engaged 

 in London or elsewhere. In this way Mr E. Eichter, now of 

 Charlottenburg (Berlin), but who was for some years in the 

 laboratory at Eothamsted, has executed much analytical work 

 sent from Eothamsted. He has, indeed, at Eothamsted and 

 Charlottenburg, made nearly 800 complete analyses of the 

 ashes of various products, animal and vegetable, of known 

 history. 



It is not easy to form anything like an accurate idea of the 

 vast amount of sampling and analytical work that has been 

 involved in the Eothamsted experiments. Figures 1 and 

 2 on pages 4 and 5 afford but a slight indication of the 

 vastness of this branch of the work. There is now in one 

 or other of the buildings a collection of over 40,000 bottles of 

 samples of experimentally grown vegetable produce, of animal 

 products, of ashes or of soils, and besides these there are some 

 thousands of samples not in bottles. A capacious " Sample- 

 House " was built in 1888, and already it is becoming incon- 

 veniently full. 



The barn-laboratory which did duty in the earlier years of 

 the experiments was ere long found inadequate for the in- 

 creasing amount of laboratory work. Very appropriately, 

 therefore, a testimonial which a number of leading agricul- 

 turists desired to present to Sir John Bennet Lawes took the 

 form of a laboratory. The construction of the Presentation 



