276 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
greatly I shall turn to presently, but I wish first of all to outline some 
of the mcre immediately helpful forms of advisory work which have 
fallen within the scope of my own personal experience. 
When some four years ago I undertook to develop for the late 
Lord Manton a research and advisory organisation to furnish guidance 
in his extensive farming enterprises, I was obliged in the first instance 
to take account of the fact that the resources at my disposal, though 
large, would not serve to cover the whole field of agricultural problems, 
and so far as specialist work was concerned it would be necessary to 
concentrate on two or three fields of activity, outside which only general 
guidance could be afforded by the departmental staff, and for specialist 
assistance it would be necessary to have recourse to the national advisory 
organisation set up by the Ministry of Agriculture. Eventually, after 
careful consideration, the fields of work selected for special attention 
were those of soils, plant nutrition, plant breeding, and animal nutrition, 
and it is to these that I propose to refer more particularly. No specific 
provision was made at the outset for dealing with diseases, either plant 
or animal, partly for reasons of economy, but mainly because it was 
felt that the outstanding disease problems could be more effectively 
dealt with by co-operative effort through the national organisation than 
by a small isolated advisory station. 
In making provision for soil work as one of our principal lines of 
activity I was actuated by the conviction that soil investigation is the 
most fundamental of all forms of agricultural research. Soil factors 
dominate the growth of crops from germination to maturity, and must 
influence the utilisation of the crops by the animal, which is their ultimate 
destiny. In stressing the importance of soil advisory work I am not 
unmindful of the fact that, despite the enormous volume of investiga- 
tion relating to soils which has been carried out, the task of the soil 
adviser still remains a very difficult one, and except in a few directions, 
and over a comparatively small area of the country, the interpretation 
of soil analytical data is rarely clear. It is a sobering thought, indeed, 
to recall the abounding optimism with which soil analysis was entered 
upon some eighty years ago, and contrast the hopes then held with 
the realities of soil advisory work as we find them to-day. The initial 
mistake—so common throughout a large part of our agricultural in- 
vestigational work of the past—lay in a failure to visualise the com- 
plexity of the problem, even with due regard to then existing knowledge. 
The problem was approached as if the soil were to be regarded solely 
as a reservoir of plant food, whose capabilities for crop production 
should therefore admit of complete diagnosis by chemical analysis. 
The conception is fascinating in its simplicity, and has dominated the 
greater part of our soil work down to the present time, repeated en- 
deavours being made by variation in the methods and intensity of the 
analytical, attack to improve the persistently low degree of correlation 
between analytical data and crop results. Parallel with this at a later 
date was developed the mechanical conception which found the major 
part of the explanation of the differentiation of fertility in the physical 
properties of the soil particles, whilst still later soil biology has asserted 
its claim to provide the ‘simple solution.’ The work of recent years, 
