Recent research work on methods of increasing the fertility of the soil has, or ought to have, assumed a suddenly enhanced importance. The headquarters of such research, internationally as well as nationally, is the Rothamsted Lxpe: mental Station in Hertfordshire, writes Sir William Beach Thomas in' the "Sunday Observer.
Some years ago it was discovered there how to convert straw and other waste vegetable matter into a fertilizer which is now called Adco, a valuable gilt to the nation.
In the temporary absence of Sir John Russell, director, I had an interesting talk recently with Mr. Keen in-a corner of the new building raised for the approaching centenary of this oldest of research stations. He told me, incidentally to our general conversation, that these experiments in converting rubbish now thrown into unsightly dumps or sunk in the sea were well on the way to a successful conclusion.
In answer to a more direct question he said that, so far as he knew, there was plenty of artificial fertilizer in the country, specially of nitrogenous manures. My essential desire was to know from the headquarters of the science itself whether a fuller perception of the value of the new fertilizers might not do a very great deal—almost as much es the plough itself—to increase the.production of food on English acres, Mr. Keen, after the manner of the born man of science, prefaced what he had to say with a reservation. It must not be presumed that the art of using fertilizer was also an exact science; you could not be quite certain that a particular fertilizer on a particular field would produce the desired result; and he gave some examples of failure; but he was quick to add that results were sufficiently certain in regard to two crops, both of the highest importance in wartime—potatoes and sugar-beet.
In regard to these crops, I gathered, the free and proper use of artificial fertilizers meant an essential increase in production in all districts. He said that there was now sufficient knowledge of the subject spread about the country to ensure their proper use, if the right authorities were consulted. Research work has for some years been partitioned out, though Rothamsted Temains, so to say, its spiritual home, When I asked Mr. Keen whether Rothamsted did any work on animal nutrition and feeding stuffs, he spoke with no little enthusiasm of the work done at Cambridge, which took over this particular branch of husbandry.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.