4 The Eothamsted Experiments. 



merits, seeks to study the published results, that the initial 

 difficulty is met with. For where shall they be sought ? The 

 answer is, in the journals of a dozen different societies, in 

 magazines, in parliamentary papers, and some of them in the 

 form of separate memoirs. About three dozen papers have 

 been communicated to the Journal of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society. Numerous other papers have appeared in the 

 Journal of the Eoyal Horticultural Society, the Journal- 1 of 

 the Chemical Society, the Journal of the Linnean Society, the 

 Journal of the Statistical Society, the Journal of the Society 

 of Arts, the Eeport of the British Association, the Proceed- 

 ings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and the Proceed- 

 ings of the Eoyal Society. Others, again, must be sought in 

 the Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles, in the 

 Philosophical Magazine, in the Journal of Anatomy and 

 Physiology, and in the Edinburgh Veterinary Eeview. About 

 ten papers were published as independent pamphlets, whilst 

 between 700 and 800 of the large quarto pages of the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, issued by the Eoyal Society, are occu- 

 pied with reports of the classical researches on the sources of 

 the nitrogen of vegetation, the composition of some of the 

 animals fed and slaughtered as human food, and the mixed 

 herbage of permanent meadow. 



The difficulty experienced by the Eothamsted investigators 

 in keeping their current publications at all abreast of their 

 researches effectually precludes the hope of our getting from 

 Eothamsted itself any connected history of the work of the 

 last half century Such a history would be gladly welcomed 

 by progressive agriculturists in all parts of the world, for it 

 is now impossible to obtain some of the original memoirs. 

 Mr. Warington, of the Eothamsted Laboratory, has tersely 

 observed that " the best English work on agricultural 

 chemistry exists as yet only in detached papers." Nearly 

 all these " detached papers " have emanated from Eotham- 

 sted, and the object of the following pages is to pre- 

 sent to the reader in a succinct and collected form a 



