61 



that the appointment was accepted with the special 

 view of utilising the occasion for the preparation for 

 publication, in a collective, systematic, and useful form, 

 of an account of the then more than 40 (and now 

 nearer 50) years of investigation, in conjunction with 

 Sir J. B. Lawes, at Eothamsted ; and although I have 

 not neglected important results and conclusions of 

 others, I have, as my Syllabus shows, fully utilised the 

 occasion as was proposed. 



The Syllabus further shows, that much of the matter 

 dealt with had previously been published in detail, but 

 that a considerable amount of new matter has also 

 been arranged and studied for, and more or less dis- 

 cussed in, the Lectures. There is thus provided the 

 basis for several systematic papers. In all cases, 

 whether the subjects had previously been reported 

 upon in detail or not, they have been brought, in the 

 lectures, into collective form and order. 



Six of the courses of Oxford Lectures have been sum- 

 marised, each into one lecture, given at the Royal Agri- 

 cultural College, Cirencester, and these single lectures 

 have been published (with some additions) as under : 



1. On Wheat, in No. 68 1884. 



2. On Barley, in No. 71 1886. 



3. On Root-crops, in No. 76 1887. 



4. On Potatoes, in No. 78 1888. 



5. On Leguminous Crops, in No. 81 . . . . 1889. 



6. On the Fixation of Free Nitrogen, in No. 84 1890. 



I will now point out what seems to be the proper 

 order of publication on other subjects, within the com- 

 paratively near future. 



1. As already referred to (p. 52), a" Preliminary Notice " 

 of the results of the experiments made at Rothamsted 

 in 1888 and 1889, on the lines of those of Hellriegel 

 and Wilfarth, to determine whether the free nitrogen of 

 the atmosphere contributes to the nitrogen of certain 

 plants, under the influence of suitable microbe infection 

 of the soil, was published in the " Proceedings of the 



