34 Reviews — Dr. E. J. Russell — Fertility of the Soil. 



be more rapid than the manufacture. Indeed, the author expresses 

 the opinion that "the oil-bearing strata will be exhausted long 

 before our coal-fields". 



After considering the questions relating to natural gas and peat, 

 the author turns attention to other sources of energy, to radium, to 

 the radiant heat from the sun, the heat energy stored in the earth, 

 that to be obtained from certain vegetable oils, timber, and alcohol, 

 and finally to the energy of rivers, waterfalls, tides, waves, and 

 winds. In his concluding chapter he remarks that " to our present 

 knowledge, even when the fossil fuels are exhausted, ample supplies 

 of energy, renewable year by year, will remain for all the conceivable 

 activities of the human race ". Nevertheless, with regard to Britain, 

 he considers that " the prospects of maintaining our present supremacy 

 as an industrial community in competition with other regions more 

 favoured by nature, are remote", and the probability is that "the 

 coming ages will see a gradual drift of the industrial centre of 

 gravity of the world towards warmer climes where, at all events, the 

 necessity for artificial heating for domestic purposes will be largely 

 non-existent". 



VIII. — The Fektility of the Soil. By Edward J. Busseli, D.Sc, 

 Director of the Rothamsted Experiment Station. 8vo ; pp. viii, 

 128, with 9 plates. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1913. 

 Price Is. net. 



rpHEBE is no doubt that interest in the scientific aspects of 

 X agriculture is largely on the increase among those engaged in 

 the cultivation of the land, and the little work before us is admirably 

 adapted to stimulate that interest. From a geological point of view, 

 however, there is little that calls for remark ; there are brief accounts 

 of the general characters and origin of soils, but the work is mainly 

 occupied by a description of how plant food is made, of the chemical, 

 physical, and organic influences at work in the soil, and of the 

 methods of increasing fertility. The volume is clearly written and 

 contains interesting accounts of agricultural operations in olden times, 

 of drainage, reclamation, and manures ; and there is a view of the 

 chalking of land in Hertfordshire, the material being still obtained 

 in places by sinking a shaft down to the Chalk formation, where it is 

 covered by clay-with-flints and drift deposits. 



IX. — Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. — The third part of 

 the Proceedings of this Society (vol. i, 1913) is a volume of 138 

 pages, with more than 40 plates, and it contains 19 articles. Among 

 these are one on a tumulus on Achill Island, another on pygmy 

 implements from Cornwall, and a third on stone implements from 

 Western Australia. The policy of publishing papers dealing with 

 regions outside East Anglia may be questioned, as the topics would 

 be more appropriate for a local Archaeological Society. The subject 

 of patination is discussed by the President, Dr. W. Allen Sturge, 

 and illustrated by plates, in duplicate, showing patinated and un- 

 patinated sides of implements. Mr. J. Reid Moir describes flint 



