PRESS AND OTHER CRITICISM 159 



would be expected from an equal weight of a mere 

 manurial substance. The amount of Nitrogen in it 

 could not supply the needs of the plant, and that 

 remark was equally applicable to the amount of 

 phosphates, etc., present. There appeared to be 

 some fundamentally new substance at work, a sub- 

 stance which was at the bottom of plant growth. It 

 had struck him that the active principle in prepared 

 peat had some analogy to a newly discovered factor 

 of animal nutrition, which was still in its infancy. 

 He believed that, directly or indirectly, the plant 

 obtained what it required from the humus, and that 

 in the peat as prepared by Professor Bottomley the 

 essential substance for growth was present. Of 

 course it was advisable to be very cautious in bring- 

 ing forward such a view, but the experiments so far 

 carried out seemed to support it, and he believed 

 that Professor Bottomley's bacterized peat con- 

 tained in relatively large quantities a substance of 

 fundamental importance." 



Country Life, October 25, 1913. 



" Professor Bottomley's results, both in the field 

 and the laboratory, have been extremely good. His 

 prepared peat contains over fifty times as much 

 available plant food as farmyard manure. . . . 

 There is no doubt that the prepared peat is of great 

 value as a manure ; but whether its fertilizing action 

 is due to the presence of Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, 

 or merely to the larger quantity of soluble humates 

 produced during the preparation of the medium, 

 cannot yet be said to have been definitely proved, 

 while the peat has also a beneficial mechanical 

 action on the soil. If only the product can be 



