an agreement for one year only, to work simply as Lawes's private assistant. Before settling at Harpenden, he made in the autumn of 1876 a short tour of the German experimental stations. He was still associated with the Rothamsted investigations in 1889 when Sir John Lawes resigned to the present committee of management his active control over the experiments. It was then evident that the work of the station could no longer be carried on in its painful state of tension between Gilbert and Warington, and, all attempts at accommodation having failed, the committee reluctantly decided in June 1890 to terminate Warington's work at the end of that year. Warington had then reached a very interesting stage in an important research he had long been pursuing (since early in 1877) on the nitrification of the soil, and he was allowed to remain on his own petition without remuneration till June 1891. Before that date he had brought the work he had on hand to a successful termination. He was, however, denied the reward of seeing his work carried to its fullest natural conclusion, for though he obtained cultures which converted ammonia into nitrites, and others which produced the further conversion of nitrites into nitrates, and thus showed that nitrification was the work of two different organisms, it was left to Winogradski to isolate the organisms themselves.
Although Warington's original work in agricultural chemistry ended with his severance from Rothamsted, he was appointed by the committee lecturer in America under the Lawes trust. He gave six lectures, delivered 12–18 Aug. 1891, whilst in the United States, dealing chiefly with the subject of nitrification as illustrated by his own work at Rothamsted. These lectures were published by the U.S. department of agriculture in ‘Expt. Station Bulletin,’ No. 8, 1892. On his return to England Lawes entrusted him with an investigation at his Millwall factory into the contamination of tartaric acid and citric acid by the vessels used in their preparation; and he found a method for overcoming the evil. In 1894 he was appointed one of the examiners in agriculture for the science and art department, and (for three years) Sibthorpian professor of agriculture at the University of Oxford. Thereafter he retired into private life at Harpenden, busying himself with writings and in charitable and religious work.
His published writings mostly appeared in the ‘Journal of the Chemical Society’ and other scientific publications. They are clear in expression and precise in argument. Amongst other literary work, he contributed the article ‘Manure’ to Mackenzie's ‘Chemistry as applied to the Arts and Manufactures,’ various articles to Watts' ‘Dictionary of Chemistry,’ and the four articles on ‘Cereals,’ ‘Citric Acid,’ ‘Artificial Manure,’ and ‘Nitrification’ to Thorpe's ‘Dictionary of Applied Chemistry’ (1895). Warington wrote the greater part of the four articles on ‘Rain and Drainage Waters at Rothamsted’ which appeared in the ‘Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society’ under the joint names of Lawes, Gilbert, and Warington in 1881–83.
His greatest success was with a practical handbook entitled ‘Chemistry of the Farm,’ which he contributed to the Farm Series of Vinton & Co. This was first published in 1881, and was translated into several foreign languages; it reached its 19th English edition during his lifetime. Dr. J. A. Voelcker says of it that ‘it is a model of what such a book should be. Whilst retaining its small compass, it is literally packed with sound information set out in concentrated form and with scientific method.’ He was elected a fellow of the Chemical Society in 1863, subsequently becoming a vice-president, and he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society in 1886.
He died at Harpenden on 20 March 1907, and was buried there.
He was twice married: (1) in 1884 to Helen Louisa (d. 1898), daughter of G. H. Makins, M.R.C.S., formerly chief assayer to the Bank of England, by whom he had five daughters; (2) in 1902 to Rosa Jane, daughter of F. R. Spackman, M.D., of Harpenden.
[Obituary by Spencer U. Pickering, F.R.S., in Journal of Chemical Society, No. dliv., Dec. 1908, pp. 2258–69 (also printed with some omissions in Proc. Royal Society, 80B, xv.–xxiv.); Cyclopædia of Modern Agriculture, 1911, xii. 79–80 (by Dr. J. A. Voelcker); personal knowledge and private information.]
WARNE, FREDERICK (1825–1901), publisher, sixth and youngest son of the twelve children of Edmund Warne, builder, and of Matilda, daughter of R. A. Stannard, was born at Westminster on 13 Oct. 1825. Educated privately at Soho, he joined, at the age of fourteen, his brother, William Henry Warne (d. 1859), and his brother-in-law, George Routledge [q. v.], in the retail bookselling business which Routledge had founded in Ryder's Court, Leicester Square, in 1836. Routledge started a
