properly conducted, soon comes to be the investigation of special questions that strictly pertain to some department of the allied sciences.
In the well-planned experiments which have been so ably conducted at Rothamsted for more than forty years, embracing a wide range of topics, there is an abundant fund of information that must be of interest not only to the farmer, who looks for results in pecuniary values, but to the man of science, seeking the truth for the truth's sake, and the intelligent general reader who wishes to trace understandingly some of the leading facts in the world's progress.
Without including numerous newspaper articles, and the annual "Memoranda of the Experiments at Rothamsted," that have been printed for several years for the convenience of visitors, nearly one hundred elaborate papers and discussions of the field, feeding, and laboratory experiments, many of which are in the form of monographs, have been published since 1847, every one of which has had its influence on questions of agricultural practice, as well as on the various theories in science that have been prominent for the past half century.
These papers are to be found in the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society," the "Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science," the "Journal of the Chemical Society of London," the "Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of London," the "Journal of the Society of Arts," the "Journal of the Horticultural Society of London," the "Reports of the Royal Dublin Society," the "Edinburgh Veterinary Review," the "Philosophical Magazine," and other periodicals, and in official reports on special subjects of investigation.
The titles alone of these papers would require the space of several pages of this magazine.
Rothamsted, with its fine old manor-house, the home of Sir John Bennet Lawes, is in Hertfordshire, England, about twenty-five miles from London, on the Midland Railway, Harpenden Station.
Mr. Lawes was born in 1814, and succeeded to his estate in 1822. He was educated at Eton, and at Brasenose College, Oxford. After leaving the university, in 1835, he spent some time in London, in the study of chemistry, which had been a subject of special interest to him when pursuing his academic course.
Soon after taking possession of his hereditary property at Rothamsted, in 1834, he began a systematic course of experiments with different fertilizers, first with plants in pots, and afterward in the field.
"The researches of Dr. Saussure on vegetation were the chief subjects of his study to this end. Of all the experiments so made, those in which the neutral phosphate of lime in bones, bone-ash, and apatite, was rendered soluble by means of sulphuric acid, and the mixture applied for root-crops, gave the most striking results.
"The results obtained on a small scale in 1837-1839 were such as
