6 THE PLACE OF RURAL ECONOMY 



annually from 1802 to 1812, when he issued the sub- 

 stance of his lectures in the form of a textbook entitled 

 The Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. I do not pro- 

 pose to enter on a discussion of Davy's historic work, 

 which did so much to raise the business of agriculture 

 from the slough of empiricism, and to set it on a 

 rational foundation. But I cannot resist pointing out 

 a circumstance that seems to have been strangely over- 

 looked, namely, that Davy anticipated by half a century 

 the experimental demonstration of the fact that legu- 

 minous plants are able to draw their nitrogen from the 

 free supplies of that element in the atmosphere. In 

 this connexion he says, ' Peas and beans . . . contain, 

 as appears from analysis, a small quantity of a matter 

 analogous to albumen ; but it seems that the azote [the 

 name at that time for nitrogen], which forms a con- 

 stituent part of this matter, is derived from the atmo- 

 sphere. The dry bean-leaf, when burned, yields a 

 smell approaching to that of decomposed animal matter; 

 and, in its decay in the soil, may furnish principles 

 capable of becoming a part of the glutin of wheat/ 

 Curiously enough two German investigators, Hellriegel 

 and Wilfarth, are generally credited with this discovery; 

 and yet it is evident that the genius of an Englishman 

 had, sixty years earlier, left but little more to learn *. 



I- have occupied a few minutes in reminding you of 

 the position that Agricultural Education and Research 

 occupied in the minds of thinking men about the time 

 that Professor Sibthorp gave practical shape to the 

 views that he held; and the conclusion we are forced 

 to arrive at, it seems to me, is that the subject excited 

 as much interest in the last decade of the eighteenth 



1 Somerville, ' Agricultural Progress in the Nineteenth Century,' 

 Journ. Bath and West Society, 1902. 



