The work was undertaken with the hope of establishing some connexion between the characters of soils as shown by chemical and mechanical analyses, and the quality and composition of the potatoes grown on them. As regards quality, most attention has been given to the occurrence of ‘blackening’ after cooking, especially after a second warming up, and an attempt has been made to get at the cause of this phenomenon. This defect has been often complained of by potato growers and dealers, and seriously affects the price of samples marketed for consumption in towns where the largest buyers are hotels and restaurants which demand a potato capable of keeping its colour after a second steaming. ‘Blackening’ is often associated with sandy soils heavily manured with farmyard dung or town manure, and it has been observed in tubers grown with spring dressings of kainite; concordant opinions, however, are not to be had from practical men, and in fact the defect may arise on the most widely different types of soil. In order to exclude disturbances due to variety, ‘Up to Date,’ as one of the most widely grown sorts, has alone been investigated.

That swedes are better feeding materials under some conditions than under others is more or less generally recognised; the suggestion of controlling these conditions is perhaps not new, but little of practical importance has been achieved in this direction. About five years ago the subject was considered at the Durham College of Science (now Armstrong College), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and experiments were started which have been repeated and added to every season. The object of these investigations was to form a list of the different varieties of swedes in order of merit. Incidentally other points of interest have arisen, and are dealt with in the following pages. The results of these experiments have been published each year in the Annual Report of the Agricultural Department of the College, but a review of the work done seems of sufficient general importance to prove interesting to a larger circle of readers.

The following note is concerned solely with the behaviour of certain characters in hybrid barleys which bear on the inheritance of sterility and the question whether sex is, as it seems possible, a phenomenon of gametic segregation. I have used the term “sterility” in a broader sense than usual to include cases in which certain florets set no grain owing to the suppression of either the female or both the male and female reproductive organs. The plants themselves are in no cases completely sterile. The other characters occurring in the numerous varieties of barley will be considered in detail later.

The use of town stable manure enters so largely into the economy of farms, and especially market-gardens, situated within fairly easy distance of London or other large cities, that it is somewhat curious that but little information has been published in this country as to its chemical composition. In fact, with the exception of a couple of analyses made by myself as long ago as 1889, which were published at the time in the Mark Lane Express, and subsequently reprinted in Aikman's book on “Manures and Manuring,” I do not remember to have seen any analyses of London manure. The samples which were the subject of these analyses were collected from a very limited number of stables, some of which were littered with peat moss and others with straw, the object at the moment being to compare the manure produced with the two kinds of litter. I have more recently however made some fairly full analyses of two more representative samples of London manure, but before proceeding to give these it may be desirable to reprint in this place, for future reference, the old analyses just mentioned.

The experiments described below have been carried out to confirm some results obtained by F. Löhnis, who made it appear highly probable that soil bacteria were concerned in rendering calcium cyanamide assimilable for crops. It had been supposed that the reaction of calcium cyanamide in the soil was a purely chemical one. The material used was taken from a supply of “Kalkstickstoff” received at the Rothamsted Experimental Station from the “Cyanid Gesellschaft” of Berlin early this year. Nitrogen determinations by the Kjeldahl method showed the crude fertiliser to contain 20.3 per cent, nitrogen, equal to 58 per cent, pure calcium cyanamide.

Summarising the above comparisons between soil analyses and results of manuring, the following conclusions are arrived at:

That except in extreme cases the determination of the percentages of “total” nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, and lime, in a soil does not give reliable indications as to the possibility of improving the pasture by manuring.

That determination of the percentage of phosphoric acid soluble in 1 per cent, citric acid solution does generally give reliable indications as to the probable success of phosphatic manuring, provided that for pasture soils the limit below which “available“ phosphoric acid may be considered as deficient is fixed as high as 0·02 per cent.

That potash manuring is suggested as likely to give distinct results if the soil contains not more than 0·01 per cent, of potash soluble in 1 per cent, citric acid solution.

That liming is not indicated as likely to be profitable unless the soil contains certainly less than 0·25 per cent, of chalk.

In Mr Biffeu's paper on “Mendel's Laws of Inheritance and Wheat Breeding” in the first number of this Journal reference is made on page 40 to the characters of immunity and susceptibility to the attacks of yellow rust. Mr Biffen's experiments confirm the conclusions of other observers, such as Farrer in Australia, that resistance and susceptibility to rust are inherited characters, and he shows that they follow the Mendelian laws. As the question is of enormous practical importance in the wheat growing countries this general statement requires to be made more precise. It holds for a given rust in a particular locality; it may or may not hold where the wheat is exposed to the attacks of a second species of rust or when it is transferred to another locality. Thus experience in India so far seems to show that resistance to yellow rust, Puccinia glumarum, does not imply resistance to orange rust, P. tritidna. And it is certain that the characters alter with change of locality.

The following short note gives the preliminary results of an experiment which I have commenced on a small scale on my father's farm at Field Dalling, near Holt, in Norfolk.

The object of the experiment is to follow out the inheritance of various characters in sheep. In the autumn of 1903 my father placed at my disposal 30 of his Suffolk ewes. Suffolk sheep of both sexes are characterised by black faces and the absence of horns. I determined to cross them with a Dorset ram, Dorsets having in both sexes white faces and large horns. For the present, characters other than horns and face-colour are neglected.

1. The results of six experiments in the manuring of poor pastures are described. The experiments were made in the counties of Northumberland, Northampton, Cambridge, Essex, Norfolk, and Hants. The results are given for a period of three years at all stations (except Norfolk, two years), and for two further periods of three and two years at the Northumberland station.

2. In Norfolk on a light soil a potash manure slightly improved the pasture; the other manures had no influence on the yield. At the remaining five stations on heavy soils phosphatic manures produced highly profitable returns. In the first period, the use of other manures was not justified by the results. Where, however, the experiment was continued for eight years, lime proved profitable in the second, and potash in the third period. Under the special conditions of the experiment nitrogenous manures were either injurious or but very slightly increased the yield.

At the beginning of October, 1904, many agricultural chemists in England received copies of the above publication from the Secretary of the commission, Dr M. Ullmann, of Hamburg, together with a letter asking all who were willing to agree with the recommendations printed in the report to signify their assent to him. Copies of the report were circulated to members of the Chemical Committee of the Agricultural Education Association, and the recommendations were informally discussed at a meeting of the committee on Dec. 8th. It was suggested that a note should be published in order to call the attention of agricultural chemists to the subject, and facilitate further discussion.