7/2 Annual Report for 1894 of the Consulting Chemist. 
Scientific Investigations. 
In the last Annual Report mention was made of a series of ex- 
periments, which, with the assistance of the Society, is being made 
by Mr. J ames Mason of Eynsham, in reference to the question of 
the enrichment of the soil by the growth of leguminous crops. 
During the year these experiments have been continued, and they 
promise to lead to important and interesting results. Among other 
points, Mr. Mason is endeavouring to ascertain, to a depth of as 
much as 26 feet below the sui’face, the amount of nitrogen con- 
tained in the different layers of the soil on which he is experiment- 
ing. It may be here mentioned, in reference to the analysis of soils, 
that considerable importance is likely to attach to Dr. Bernard Dyer’s 
recent investigations upon the “ availability ” of the mineral plant 
food in soils. It has long been felt that the determination of the 
“ total ” amount of mineral food in a soil was not always a guide 
to the soil’s “ active fertility ” in these respects, and that something 
more was needed, or some further process required, to enable one to 
say what amount of that food could be reckoned upon to take its part 
in the processes of ci-op production. Dr. Dyer, by using as a solvent 
of the soil a 1 per cent, solution of citric acid, has been able to 
obtain results which, so far as regards potash and phosphoric acid, 
have, in the case of the well-known Rothamsted wheat soils, given 
results which bring very fairly together the analytical results and 
those obtained in the actual crop returns. The solvent employed, it 
may be said, was decided upon after numerous determinations of the 
amount of acidity contained in the root sap of various plants belong- 
ing to the natural orders represented by our common field crops, 
and the action of the solvent (1 per cent, solution of citric acid) was 
intended to represent, as it were, the action of the acid sap of the 
rootlets on the particles of soil with which these came in contact. 
Arrangements have been recently concluded by which it is hoped 
that greater opportunities will be given than in the past for the 
carrying out by the Society’s chemical staff of investigations on agri- 
cultural problems in which the aid of chemical science can be use- 
fully employed. 
The following is the list of analyses made in the Society’s labo- 
ratory during the past year : — 
List of Analyses made for Members of the Society from December 1, 
1893, to November 30, 1894. 
Linseed cakes 
. 184 
Undecorticated cotton cakes . 
. 79 
Decorticated cotton cakes 
. 42 
Compound feeding cakes and meals 
. 52 
Rice meals 
. 11 
Cereals 
. 15 
Dried grains 
8 
Silage and hay 
. 16 
Roots ....... 
. 18 
Butter, milk, and cream 
. 14 
