REVIEWS OF BOOKS. 



309 



of botany can afford to be without it. The book is well and copiously 

 illustrated by a large number of excellent figures, many of which, how- 

 ever, do duty twice in the book. Two indexes are given — one of the 

 figures and one general. They appear to have been carefully compiled, 

 though it is a little difiicult to discover what rule was followed in selecting 

 the names of fungi to appear in the general index. 



" The Book of the Rothamsted Experiments." By A. D. Hall. 

 Large 8vo. 29-i pp. (John Murray, London.) IO5. M. net. 



Although perhaps of more interest to the agriculturist than to the 

 grower of garden crops — since it deals mainly with experiments on such 

 crops as wheat, barley, clover, and hay — yet no one who is interested in 

 the cultivation of the soil can afford to be ignorant of the results of the 

 numberless experiments of which this book gives an account. The 

 series of experiments which Sir John Lawes and Sir Joseph Gilbert 

 started and carried out through sixty years at Rothamsted have gained 

 a world-wide reputation and inspired the prosecution of similar experi- 

 ments wherever agriculture is regarded as of serious importance. The 

 author, who is now Director of the Rothamsted Experiment Station, 

 has given to the world an excellent general view of the experiments and 

 their results, and has pointed out, as he is so well qualified to do, the 

 practical lessons which are to be learned from these results, so that both 

 the student of agricultural science and the practical man will each find 

 here matter of the greatest importance. 



The object of these experiments was, as the writer points out, 

 to obtain accurate knowledge of how the various plants obtain their 

 nutrition, and not to see whether such and such a manure pays ; and this 

 object has been kept in view throughout the long period over which 

 these experiments were spread, ^i.th. the necessary consequence that the 

 experiments are of value for all time and iu every place — not only for 

 the time and place where the conditions are similar to those under which 

 the experiments were carried out. Here are to be found accounts of the 

 experiments on the source from which plants derive their nitrogen — a 

 question on which the views of scientific men have undergone such a 

 change since the initiation of these experiments in 1843. A review of the 

 meteorological observations and of the composition of the Rothamsted 

 soil follows, both of which are necessary for a correct interpretation of 

 the results of the numerous experiments. Then come detailed accounts 

 of the experiments on wheat, barley, cats, root-crops, leguminous crops, 

 hay, the nature of the herbage in the fields under different systems of 

 manuring, and an account of the various rotation experiments, especially 

 as far as the effect of the manurial residues on subsequent crops goes, 

 and so on. Chapter XI. returns to the question of the supply of nitrogen 

 to the plant from the soil and deals with nitrification, a subject upon 

 which much still remains to be discovered. The final chapters deal with 

 questions concerning the nutrition of animals and with such subjects as 

 sewage, irrigation, malting, ensilage, and wheat composition. 



The value of the work is enhanced by the thirty-seven diagrams and 

 fourteen plates, including portraits of Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert, together 

 with obituary notices by Professor Warrington reprinted from those of 



