4921.] 



Notices of Books. 



765 



Lawes Agricultural Trust, Rothamsted Experimental 

 Station, Harpenden. Report 1918-20. With the "Guide to 

 the Experimental Plots."— (D. J. Jeffery, Vaughan Road, Harpeuden. 

 Price 2s. 6d. Foreign postage extra.) The Rothamsted Experimental 

 Station, famous the world over, was founded in 1843 by Sir J. B. Lawes, with 

 whom was associated Sir J. H. Gilbert for a period of nearly 60 years. 

 Sir A. D. Hall (now Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Agi'iculture) 

 was Director from 1902 till 1912, when Dr. E. J. Russell succeeded him. 

 The period reviewed in the present Report completes the reconstruction ■ 

 which began in 1913. The laboratories have been entirely rebuilt ; a library 

 of some 15,000 volumes dealing with agriculture and cognate sciences 

 has been collected ; the equipment of the farm has been completed, and 

 cultivations and cleanings necessarily neglected during the War have been 

 -carried out. 



Rothamsted Methods. — The most important part of the reconstruction, 

 however, has been the reorganising of the work of the Station to bring it more 

 into touch with modern conditions of agriculture on the one hand and with 

 science on the other. The purpose of Rothamsted is, as stated in the Report, 

 to acquire precise knowledge of soils, fertilisers, and the growing plant in 

 health and disease. The work falls into two divisions : — (1) The soil and the 

 healthy plant ; and (2) the insects, fungi, and other agencies disturbing the 

 healthy relationships between the soil and the plant, causing disease. The 

 opinion is held at Rothamsted that if farmers are ever to avoid the very serious 

 losses they now sufEer from plant diseases and pests, it will be by prevention 

 rather than by cure. The method adopted at the Station is to start from the 

 farm and work to the laboratory, or vice versa. There are four divisions in 

 the laboratory — biological, chemical, physical, and statistical. The method 

 differs, however, from that of an ordinary scientific laboratory, where the 

 problem under investigation is usually narrowed down so closely that only one 

 factor is concerned. On a farm such narrowing-down is impossible, and in 

 place, therefore, of the ordinary single-factor method, liberal use is made of 

 statistical methods, which allow investigation where several factors vary 

 simultaneously. For instance, in crop investigations a large number of field 

 observations are made ; these are then treated statistically to ascertain the 

 varying degrees to which they are related to other factors, such as rainfall, 

 temperature, etc., and to indicate the probable nature of their relationship. 

 Thus a complex problem is reduced to a number of simpler ones susceptible of 

 laboratory investigation. It is confidently anticipated that this method will 

 prove effective in bringing the full help of science to bear on the farmers' 

 problems. 



Fertiliser and Soil Problems. — The War has profoundly modified the 

 artificial fertiliser position. Extensive factories now manufacture nitrogenous 

 fertilisers from the air. Of these, nitrate of lime, nitrate and muriate of 

 ammonia, and nitrolim have been or are under investigation at Rothamsted. A 

 further important source of organic nitrogenous manure is sewage, and a new 

 method of dealing with sewage, which has been devised by Dr. Fowler at 

 Manchester, has been tested at Rothamsted, and it is found that a general 

 adoption of the method would add considerably to our supplies of organic 

 manures. Rothamsted is also investigating _basic slag. A grazing experiment 

 with sheep, and a set of hay experiments on permanent and on temporary 



