8 
INVESTIGATIONS ON ROTHAMSTED SOILS. 
into the mental repose that gradually creeps into the life that is lived. 
An unfortunate seizure of a zymotic type, purely adventitious and 
indiscriminate in its choice of victims between youth and age, termi- 
nated his labors at a few days' notice. 
The life and career of Sir John Lawes up to ten years since were 
ably sketched to you by Professor Warington at the opening of the 
first series of these lectures, 1 and I will therefore now not do more 
than thus briefly record the temporal death of one who will live peren- 
nially in scientific history as one of the most remarkable figures of 
the century that is just drawing to its close. I would like, however, 
to add that during the last three years he had looked forward with 
much interest to the delivery to you of the lectures which, at his own 
request, have been intrusted to my unworthy hands, that he has 
often personally discussed Avith me their scope and material, and that, 
within a very few days of his death, his last act of work was to dis- 
cuss with Sir Henry Gilbert the selection of some of the matter which 
he and his colleague desired to be brought before you on this occasion. 
You are well aware of the scope and nature of the long-continued 
and multifarious work carried on at Rothamsted, not merely from 
the bulletins or "memoranda" which are annually transmitted to 
many of you individually, but also through the comprehensive lec- 
tures in which Sir Henry Gilbert, on the occasion of his last visit to 
your country, summed up a large part of the work of no less than fifty 
years of research. 2 Among the matters which he brought to your 
notice was much of the chemical work which had been done in 
the examination from time to time of certain of the experimental 
soils, some of which had, indeed, been brought to your notice by 
my earlier predecessor, Professor Warington. With the excep- 
tion, however, of some special work of my own on the barley soils, 
tne latest systematic series of analyses which had then been made 
was that of the samples of the Broadbalk wheat field collected in 1881. 
During the year of Sir Henry Gilbert's visit to you, however, viz, in 
1893, a complete set of new samples was taken from this field on the 
completion of the fiftieth consecutive wheat crop; and these samples 
have since been submitted to examination in various ways in the 
Rothamsted laboratory, and also with regard to certain special points, 
by the kind permission of the committee, in my own laboratory. The 
result has naturally been to add much to the already valuable knowl- 
edge arrived at by the analyses of the earlier samples, many of which 
early samples, it may be added, have been reexamined since by 
myself in the Light of later work in certain directions not com en i 
plated when t he samples were originally taken. We have thus, with 
Hie old results and the new, a large mass of information relating to 
the chemistry of the wheal soils, which it has been the desire of both 
Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert to have presented now in a 
1 U. S. Dept. Agr., Office of Experiment Stations Bui. 8. 
2 U. 8. Dept. Agr., Office of Experiment Stations Bui. 22. 
