GENERAL RESULTS 179 



I am not pretending that such results will always 

 follow on the application of bacterized peat. How- 

 ever careful the directions given, it is inevitable that 

 from time to time mistakes will be made in the 

 methods used for employing the peat, and the com- 

 plexity of Nature is such that special conditions 

 will inevitably arise where results will fall short of 

 anticipation. The practical grower and the amateur 

 gardener hardly need to be told that both horti- 

 culture and agriculture are still, despite centuries 

 of accumulated experience, to a large extent in the 

 experimental stage, and it would be unreasonable 

 to expect that after ten years of experimental work, 

 much of it perforce done in the laboratory and the 

 hothouse, there can be the same degree of certainty 

 which may fairly be expected from methods which 

 have stood the test of centuries. 



It has not been an easy matter to select typical 

 results from the evidence available. Experiments 

 have been tried with success on many species other 

 than those of which mention is made, but I have 

 attempted to select those species which are more 

 commonly under cultivation. At the outset I would 

 state frankly that the presentation of the results is 

 faulty. Scientific methods would require the state- 

 ment of exact comparative weights and measure- 

 ments with standardized tests of colour, and so forth. 

 The conditions under which such work can be done, 

 however, cannot readily be complied with. The 

 horticulturist and the farmer who in the past years 

 have been willing to give a trial to bacterized peat 

 are inevitably men who have other business to 



