60 Natural History. 



The skill and enterprise of many observers, and especially 

 of Miss Dudgeon, have already shown results of great prac- 

 tical value. She informs me (20th November, 191 2) that 

 Potatoes (British Queen) under electrified wires averaged this 

 year 13 tons i cwt. per acre; whilst, according to Mr 

 M'Alister, the average crop in this district only amounted to 

 about 7 tons per acre.* 



Of course, for a wide practical application, further data 

 are necessary, but the results already obtained for corn, 

 potatoes, and some other crops are exceedingly promising. 



The experiment station at Lincluden is not only some- 

 thing for us in this district to be proud of, but is of the first 

 importance to all civilised Europe. 



The costly nature of the apparatus is at present a draw- 

 back, but such material difficulties will surely vanish as soon 

 as a fair chance of definite profits can be demonstrated. At 

 anyrate, as the history of industry shows, such obstacles have 

 been generally overcome in every other art and craft. 



British Botanists a few years ago were only interested in 

 flowering plants. To-day there are complete monographs of 

 algae and lichens, of fungi and liverworts, and indeed of every 

 class of vegetable. One can even determine the bacterial 

 flora in samples of water or of soil. This in itself is no mean 

 achievement. Nor is that all, for we are now almost able 

 to give a name to every living creature discoverable in the 

 British Isles. But not quite to all, for the variety in the insect 

 world and in some other classes of animals is bewildering. 

 The preparation of such systematic monographs is an exceed- 

 ingly difficult matter. Yet during the last fifty years many 

 lives have been devoted whole-heartedly to uninteresting, 

 tedious dissection, to eye-straining microscopical work, and to 

 laborious search of authorities often on behalf of minute 

 animalculae, in which perhaps only twenty or thirty people 

 now living are in the least degree interested. 



Not only so, but men and women have been found willing 

 to doom themselves to libraries in order to index scientific 



* The crop was raised and weighed under the siipeiintendence 

 of Professor Priestley. See also Dudgeon Electro-cult are. 



