PKEFATOKY NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 3 



Eton and Oxford were not of much assistance to those whose tastes 

 were scientific rather than classical, and consequently my early pursuits 

 were of a most desultory character. Matters, however, began to look 

 serious when, at the age of twenty, I gave an order to a London firm 

 to tit up a complete laboratory, and I am afraid it sadly disturbed the 



Eeace of mind of my mother to see one of the best bedrooms in the 

 ouse fitted up with stoves, retorts, and all the apparatus and reagents 

 necessary for chemical research. At that time my attention was very 

 much directed to the composition of drugs. . . . 



The active principle of a number of substances was being discovered 

 at this time, and in order to make these substances I sowed on my farm 

 poppies, hemlock, henbane, colchicum, belladonna, &c. Some of these 

 are still growing about the place. Dr A. T. Thomson had suggested a 

 process for making calomel and corrosive sublimate, by burning quick- 

 silver in chlorine gas. I undertook to carry out the process on a large 

 scale, and wasted a good deal of time and money on a process which 

 was, in fact, no improvement on the process then in use. Failures, 

 however, have their value, as I found out afterwards. All this time I 

 had the home farm of about 250 acres in hand. I entered upon it in 

 1834. Farmers were suffering from the abundance of the crops, and 

 wheat, although rigidly protected, was very low in price. For three or 

 four years I do not remember that any connection between chemistry 

 and agriculture passed through my mind ; but the remark of a gentle- 

 man who farmed near me, who pointed out that on one farm bones 

 were invaluable for the turnip crop, and on another farm they were 

 useless, attracted my attention a good deal, especially as I had spent a 

 good deal of money on bones without success. Somewhere about this 

 time a drug-broker in the city of London asked me whether I could 

 make use of precipitated gypsum and spent animal charcoal, both of 

 which substances held at the time no market value. Some tons of 

 these were sent down, and, as sulphuric acid was largely used by me in 

 making chlorine gas, the combination of the two followed. 



The successful application of the superphosphate on my own fields 

 caused me to take out a patent and to send it out for trial elsewhere. 

 I put up an edge-runner to grind the charcoal finer, but to manufacture 

 the substance on a large scale profitably with a carriage of twenty-five 

 miles by waggon was out of the question. It was, however, a serious 

 step to set up a manufactory in London, and it did not take place for 

 some years afterwards. All this time I was carrying on a very large 

 number of experiments with chemical manures, but they were per- 

 formed upon areas of land too small to give trustworthy acreage results. 

 I think the Gardeners' Chronicle, which was first published in 1840, 

 contains the result of my earliest experiments with various chemical 

 salts J. B. Lawes. 



ROTHAMSTED, ST ALBANS. 



Great undertakings have small beginnings. The Eotham- 

 sted experiments were begun with plants in pots. This 

 occurred soon after 1834, in which year, as has been seen, 

 Sir (then Mr) John Bennet Lawes entered into possession of 

 his hereditary property at Eothamsted. The trials were 

 afterwards taken to the field, the researches of De Saussure 

 on vegetation being the chief subjects of study at this time. 

 Of all the initial experiments made, those in which the 



