406 
NATURE 
[JUNE 10, 1915 

takes occasion to discuss the bearing of the work 
of a research station upon the development of agri- 
culture. He maintains that its function is to obtain 
knowledge that the corps of teachers and experts now 
in the country can utilise. ‘‘ Before the expert adviser 
and the teacher can do their work satisfactorily it is 
evident that definite systematic knowledge myst be 
obtained of the subject with which they have to deal. 
Until this has been done much of their teaching must 
be purely conjectural, and may even be unsound—the 
history of the subject is full of illustrations in point. 
The only safe foundation on which their work can 
be built up is sound accurate knowledge gained by 
systematic investigation.” 
This appears to us very necessary doctrine; the 
State has now endowed Rothamsted so that it becomes 
subject to official criticism as to whether it is return- 
ing value for its money, and official criticism always 
likes to take its cue from the practical man. Yet 
much of the best work of Rothamsted must remain 
not merely unappreciated by, but unintelligible to, the 
practical man; the real test of its value must be 
whether it is moulding the opinion and rendering 
more accurate the advice of the teacher who is deal- 
ing directly with the farmer. To take a case in point : 
one of the commonest questions addressed to the 
scientific man by the farmer is whether he should 
lime his land, how much should be put on, and 
whether quicklime or carbonate. The first part of the 
question admitted of some sort of answer from 
analysis, though the chemist who began by deter- 
mining the amount of calcium dissolved out of the 
soil by acid (a practice by no means extinct) arrived 
at most misleading results. Later the chemist began 
to determine the carbonate in the soil as a measure 
of the necessary base to supply which is the function 
of quicklime or carbonate, and latterly refined methods 
of analysis were devised to pick up the trace of 
carbonate which in many soils makes all the difference 
between fertility and poverty. Still, there were many 
dubious cases left; nor were they quite cleared up by 
attempts by means of litmus, etc., tto determine 
whether the soil was neutral or acid. 
In a set of papers abstracted in this report Hutchin- 
son and MacLennan have practically cleared up the 
difficulties by attacking the problem from the chemical 
and biological side simultaneously. As an outcome 
they have devised an analytical process which proved 
sufficiently critical to indicate differences in the soil 
corresponding to the varying natural flora of parts 
of Harpenden Common, a non-calcareous soil verg- 
ing on acidity and in places overpassing the neutral 
limit. These authors further were able to dis- 
criminate between the action of quicklime and 
carbonate of lime, so as to arrive at a rational ex- 
planation of the very different action upon the soil 
they occasionally exhibit. The continuous work these 
three papers represent would appear to a practical 
man to be wasted; he ‘‘knows’”’ that lime is the 
remedy for sour soils and requires no research to 
teach him that. The shoe does not happen to be 
pinching him, but the time comes when some other 
practical man begins to wonder if his soil is sour and 
if he wants lime or had better try chalk or ground 
limestone, points on which the general maxim of 
sour soils requiring lime has no particular bearing 
So he turns to his scientific adviser, who is now, 
thanks to Hutchinson’s and MacLennan’s research, 
in a position to answer with some accuracy. We 
have laboured his point because it is typical; years 
and years of work of a research station, even if 
successful, may be required in order to modify a 
single sentence in a text-book, upon which, in its turn, 
depends the judgment of men whose function it is to 
advise the farmer. 
NO. 2380, VOL. 95] 


To the practical man the work of a research station 
must always seem remote and in the air; fortunately 
the old field plots at Rothamsted have such an extra- 
ordinary fascination and raise such interest in the 
least scientific of farmers that the value of the unseen 
laboratory work has been also taken for granted; 
moreover, the new land available is being utilised 
for sundry temporary experiments of immediate in- 
terest to the working agriculturist. 

PRESENTATION TO SIR PHILIP MAGNUS. 
DISTINGUISHED company assembled in Car- 
penters’ Hall, London Wall, on Wednesday, June 
2, on the occasion of the presentation to Sir Philip 
Magnus, M.P., of an address on his retirement from 
his position as superintendent of the technological 
eXaminations of the City and Guilds of London Insti- 
tute, which he has held for the last thirty-five years, by 
the Association of Technical Institutions, a body repre- 
senting more than ninety such institutions in the 
United Kingdom and in the colonies. The assembly 
was a fine testimony-of the esteem in which he is 
held by all ranks of educationists for the eminent 
service he has rendered by speech and writings and by 
administrative work during a long and strenuous life. 
There were present, among many others, Sir Alfred 
Keogh, who presided, Sir Henry Miers, the Rt. Hon. 
Herbert Samuel, M.P., Mr. Pike Pease, M.P., the 
Rt. Hon. Sir Wm. Mather, Sir H. F. Hibbert, M.P., 
Sir Swire Smith, Sir George R. Kenrick, Sir Amherst 
Selby-Bigge, Sir John Struthers, Mr. Morton Latham, 
Prof. H. E. Armstrong, Dr. G. T. Beilby, and repre- 
sentatives of the Teachers’ Registration Council, of 
the associations of directors and secretaries for educa- 
tion, of teachers in technical institutions, of the art 
masters, of Local. Government officers, and of the 
College of Preceptors. The presentation of the illu- 
minated address was made by Mr. J. H. Reynolds, 
and of the personal gifts to Sir Philip and Lady 
Magnus by Sir Wm. Mather. The address set forth 
the high appreciation of the association for the great 
services rendered by Sir Philip Magnus as a member 
of the Royal Commission on Technical Education of 
1882, and for the important share which he has taken, 
not only in the development of technical education as 
a consequence thereof, but in the endeavour to place 
upon a sound footing the teaching of science in the 
secondary school and to introduce the principles and 
practice of manual training in all types of schools. 
Reference was made in the course of the proceedings 
‘to the great value of the work accomplished by the 
institute under the guidance and inspiration of Sir 
Philip Magnus, to the help and encouragement given 
in the foundation of many technical institutions, to 
the establishment of a system of technological exam- 
inations which last year comprised seventy-three 
subjects attended by 56,000 students, and to the para- 
mount necessity of more serious attention being given 
to the cultivation of science and to its application to 
industrial uses if the nation is to maintain success- 
fully its industrial and commercial position in com- 
petition with other nations and especially with 
Germany. No attempts to ‘capture’? German trade 
can have any possible chance of success unless they 
are founded on the sure basis of scientific research 
carried out by men thoroughly trained as scientific 
investigators, supported, as in Germany, by ample 
resources; and for this purpose it is necessary that 
there should be an entire change in the attitude of the 
English employer, from whom much more active 
encouragement and sympathy are needed. The course 
of the war has shown the enormous advantage which 
Germany enjoys as a result of her sedulous cultiva- 

