October 20, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



551 



to the botanist as well as to the chemist and 

 proto-zoologist. In the plant we are deal- 

 ing with a living organism, not a machine; 

 and an adequate knowledge of the organ- 

 ism is essential to a proper study of its 

 nutrition and growth. The facility with 

 which a considerable sum of money was 

 raised just before the war to improve the 

 equipment at Rothamsted, where work was 

 being done on these lines, indicates that 

 practical men are ready to come forward 

 with financial help if work which promises 

 to yield results of economic importance is 

 being seriously carried out. And it is sig- 

 nificant of the attitude of botanists to such 

 problems that there is only one trained 

 botanist on the staff of this institution. 



The study of manures and their effect on 

 the plant should attract the botanist as well 

 as the chemist. In this connection I may 

 refer to Mr. Martin Sutton's recent work 

 at Reading on the effects of radioactive 

 ores and residues on plant life. A series 

 of experiments was carried out in two suc- 

 cessive years with various subjects selected 

 for the different character of their produce, 

 and including roots, tubers, bulbs, foliage 

 and fruit. From the immediate point of 

 view of agriculture and horticulture the 

 results were negative ; the experiments gave 

 no hope of the successful employment of 

 radium as an aid to either the farmer or the 

 gardener. Speaking generally, the produce 

 from a given area was less when the soil 

 had been treated with pure radium bromide, 

 or various proprietary radioactive fertil- 

 izers, than when treated with farmyard 

 manure or a complete fertilizer; while the 

 cost of dressing was very much greater. 

 To quote Mr. Sutton's concluding words: 



The door is still open to the investigator in 

 search of a plant fertilizer which will prove su- 

 perior to farmyard dung or the many excellent 

 artificial preparations now available. 



But though the immediate result was un- 

 satisfactory to the grower, there were sev- 

 eral points of interest which would have 

 appealed to the botanist who was watching 

 the course of the experiments, and which, if 

 followed up, might throw light on the effect 

 of radium on plant-life and lead in the end 

 to some useful result. As Mr. Sutton points 

 out, many of the results were "contradic- 

 tory, ' ' while a close examination of the trial 

 notes, together with the records of weights, 

 will furnish highly interesting problems. 

 For instance, there was evidence in some 

 cases that germination was accelerated by 

 the presence of radium, though subsequent 

 growth was retarded; and the fact that in 

 several of the experiments plants dressed 

 with a complete fertilizer in addition to 

 radium have not done so well as those 

 dressed with the fertilizer only may be re- 

 garded as corroborating M. Truffaut's sug- 

 gestion that radium might possess the 

 power of releasing additional nitrogen in 

 the soil for the use of plants, and that the 

 plants in question were suffering from an 

 excess of nitrogen. Certain remarkable 

 variations between the duplicate unmanured 

 control plots in several of the experiments 

 led to the suggestion that radium emana- 

 tions may have some effect, apparently a 

 beneficial one. I have quoted these experi- 

 ments as an example of a case where the 

 cooperation of the botanist and the prac- 

 tical man might lead to useful results, and 

 at the same time afford work of much inter- 

 est to the botanist. 



As an introduction to such work univer- 

 sity professors might encourage their ad- 

 vanced students to spend their long vaca- 

 tion in a large nursery or botanic garden 

 where experimental work is done. 



As regards the worker in agriculture and 

 horticulture, how can the botanist help? 

 Apart from well-staffed and well-equipped 

 schools of agriculture and horticulture, 



