791 



Considerable progress has been made in setting up the Com- 

 mittees, and also the Siib-Committees which are to he 

 responsible for the detailed work of administration. At the 

 end of October, in 54 out of the (V2 administrative counties 

 in England and Wales (excluding London, where it has been 

 decided not to establish a Committee, but including the Isles 

 of Scilly) one or more meetings of the Committee had been 

 held. In all other cases the Committees are now complete, 

 and the first meeting" will shortly be held. 



Even when a Committee is complete it is still necessary 

 for much to be done in the formation of Sub-Committees, some 

 ■of ^vhich have to carry out the duties of existing Committees 

 with statutory powers. It is, however, confidently expected 

 that, before the end of the year, every county will have its 

 new orofanisation in full workinsf order. 



The reclamation of waste land was the subject of an address 



delivered by Dr. E. J. Eussell, the Director of the Rothamsted 



, .. Experimental Station, on . 5th November, to 

 The Reclamation , ^, k ■ ^- ^ 



£ -r,T 1. T- J 1- a meetmo- ot the Association or Economic 



of Waste Land by ^. , . . ^ , ^ . , 



^ . , Biologists. Ihe speaker first made 



Agricultural Means. , . . ^ ^ i • i xi 



° briei reference to cases m which the 



problem was mainly an engineering one, namely, on land 



which was inaccessible either owing to the absence of roads 



or to the soil being so wet that implements and animals 



could not be got on to it. Reclamation in such cases is a 



question of the provision of good roads and of proper drainage. 



An instance mentioned was the area between the rivers Crouch 



and Blackwater in Essex. The neighbouring island of Foulness 



has been reclaimed by building a wall to prevent floods and 



by drainage, and is now valuable agricultural land. 



In some cases the land is waste through some inherent 



defect, e.g., thinness of soil with an underlying stratum of 



rock. If this stratum is thin and there is a good soil underneath, 



the problem is to remove the rock and join up the two sections 



of good soil. When, however, the rock underneath the thin 



soil is solid rock, there is no practical means of solving the 



problem. 



In dealing with the. question of reclamation by purely agri- 

 cultural means, Dr. Russell divided the requirements of plants 

 and soil organisms into five categories, namely: (1) Nutritive 

 materials and energy supply: (2) Air: (3) Water; (4) Suitable 

 ^temperature ; (5) Absence of injurious conditions. 



