530 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 981 



the leading agricultural societies and by 

 more than one private land-owner. 



In these few sentences I have endeav- 

 ored to give a rough, but for my purpose 

 sufficient, outline of the facilities for the 

 study of agricultural science twenty-five 

 years ago, at the time when the county 

 councils were created. Their creation was 

 followed almost immediately by what can 

 only be called a stroke of luck for agricul- 

 ture. The chancellor of the exchequer 

 found himself with a considerable sum of 

 money at his disposal, and this was voted 

 by Parliament to the newly created county 

 councils for the provision of technical in- 

 struction in agriculture and other indus- 

 tries. 



Farmers were at that time struggling 

 with the bad times following the wet sea- 

 sons and low prices of the 'seventies and 

 'eighties, and some of the technical instruc- 

 tion grant was devoted to their assistance 

 by the county councils, who provided tech- 

 nical instruction in agriculture. Thus, for 

 the first time considerable sums provided 

 by the government were available for the 

 furtherance of agricultural science; and, 

 although at first there was no general plan 

 of working and every county was a law 

 unto itself, the result has been a great in- 

 crease of facilities for agricultural educa- 

 tion and research. 



Almost every county has taken some 

 part. The larger and richer counties have 

 founded agricultural institutions of their 

 own. In some cases groups of counties 

 have joined together and federated them- 

 selves with established teaching institu- 

 tions. For my purpose it suffices to state, 

 without going into detail, that in practi- 

 cally every county, in one way or other, at- 

 tempts have been made to carry out inves- 

 tigations of problems related to agriculture. 



Twenty years after the voting of the 

 technical instruction grant to the county 



councils, parliament has again subsidized 

 agriculture, in the shape of the develop- 

 ment fund, by means of which large sums 

 of money have been devoted to what may 

 be broadly called agricultural science. It 

 seems to me that the advent of this second 

 subsidy is an occasion when this section 

 may well pause to take stock of the results 

 which have been achieved by the expendi- 

 ture of the technical education grant. I 

 do not propose to discuss the results 

 achieved in the way of education, although 

 most of the technical instruction grant has 

 been spent in that direction. It will be 

 more to the point in addressing the Agri- 

 cultural Section to discuss the results ob- 

 tained by research. 



The subject, then, of my address is the 

 result of the last twenty years of agricul- 

 tural research, and I propose to discuss 

 both successes and failures, in the hope of 

 arriving at conclusions which may be of 

 use in the future. 



Agricultural science embraces a variety 

 of subjects. I propose to consider first the 

 results which have been obtained by the 

 numerous practical field experiments which 

 have been carried out in almost every 

 county. I suppose that the most striking 

 result of these during the last twenty years 

 is the demonstration that in certain eases 

 phosphates are capable of making a very 

 great increase in the crop of hay, and a 

 still greater increase in the feeding value 

 of pastures. This increase is not yielded in 

 all cases, but the subject has been widely 

 investigated, and the advisory staffs of the 

 colleges are in a position to give inquirers 

 reliable information as to the probability of 

 success in almost any case which may be 

 submitted to them. This is a satisfactory 

 state of things, and the question naturally 

 arises: How has it come about? 



On looking through the figures of the 

 numerous reports which have been pub- 



