108 
E.rperiments  of  the  late  Mr.  James  Mason. 
charges’’ : this  includes  rates,  supervision,  and  all  miscellaneous 
expenditure  which  cannot  be  allotted,  and  is  divided  out  accord- 
ing to  the  acreage.  On  the  credit  side  come  the  returns  for 
the  crops,  either  actual,  or  estimated  on  the  percentage  of  dry 
matter  in  such  cases  as  roots  or  straw  consumed  on  the 
farm.  Such  credits  become  of  course  debits  in  the  other 
accounts  kept  against  the  stock.  A day’s  ploughing  is  charged 
at  a fixed  price,  which  is  in  its  turn  divided  as  credits  among 
the  manual  labour,  horses,  and  implement  accounts.  If  at  the 
end  of  the  year  the  account  against  the  “ horses  " shows  that 
the  work  for  which  they  have  received  credits  does  not  pav  for 
their  forage,  depreciation,  interest  on  ca])ital,  t^'c.,  the  deficit  is 
carried  to  the  “establishment  charges”  and  thus  spread  equallv 
over  the  whole  land.  Similarly  with  all  the  subsidiary 
accounts  which  have  to  be  opened  for  (“ach  of  those  hug-bears 
of  farm  accountancy — products  that  are  not  realised  in  cash, 
and  operations  which  possess  only  a conting(mt  value — when- 
ever they  fail  to  pay  their  way  the  deficits  ar<‘  transferred  to 
the  “establishment  charges.” 
Turning  now  to  Mr.  Mason’s  schemes  of  reform,  his  prime 
idea  was  to  try  and  utilise  the  r(>sources  of  the  soil  and  subsoil 
to  a much  greater  extent  than  was  done  by  tin*  current  systems 
of  farming.  Oiily  a very  small  ])ro])ortion  of  the  nitrogen. 
])hosphoric  acid,  and  })otash  that  are  present  even  in  the 
surface  layer  of  soil  ever  reaches  the  crop,  still  less  are 
the  reserves  in  the  subsoil  made  available  ; so  that  we  find 
croj)S  stunted  or  starved  for  manure  on  land  which  itself  may 
contain  manurial  matter  for  a hundred  or  more  maximum  cro])s. 
Mr.  Mason's  early  experiments  consisted  of  attempts  to  utilise 
the  subsoil  ; but  after  Hellriegel  and  Wilfarth’s  discovery  of 
the  fixation  of  nitrogen  by  the  bacteria  present  in  the  nodules 
on  the  roots  of  leguminous  plants,  his  experiments  were  maiidy 
directed  towards  making  a greater  use  of  leguminous  croj)s, 
ho})ing  thereby  to  raise  the  fertility  of  the  land  by  natural 
means  until  the  farm  was  independent  of  external  sources 
of  nitrogen  in  the  shape  of  purchased  fertilisers.  At  this 
time  Mr.  Mason  was  in  constant  communication  with  Lawes 
and  Gilbert,  who  were  then  engaged  in  verifying  Hellriegel 
and  Wilfarth’s  results  l>y  a series  of  experiments  at  Hothamsted, 
carried  out  partly  in  pots  and  j)artly  in  small  pits  isolated  from 
one  another  by  walls  of  slate.  Mr.  Mason  writes  to  Dr.  Gilbert 
in  1888  : “I  am  having  ])rinted  some  notes  on  the  growth  of 
Red  Clover  and  Vetches  and  will  send  you  a copy.  I am  very 
I 
