Six Lectures on the Investigations at Rothamsted Experimental Station Delivered Under the Provisions of the Lawes Agricultural Trust Before the at Washington, D C, August 1218, 1891

Excerpt from Six Lectures on the Investigations at Rothamsted Experimental Station Delivered Under the Provisions of the Lawes Agricultural Trust: Before the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations at Washington, D. C., August 12-18, 1891

The active principle of a number of substances was being discovered at this time, and in order to make these substances I sowed on my farm poppies, hemlock, hen bane, colchicum, belladonna, etc. Some of these are still growing about the place. Dr. Thomson had suggested a process for making calomel and corrosive sublimate by burning quicksilver in chlorine gas. I undertook to carry out the process on a large scale and wasted a good deal of time and money on a process which was in fact no improvement on the process then in use. Failures, however, have their value, as I found out afterwards. All this time Ihad the home farm, of about 250 acres, in hand. I entered upon it in 1834. Farmers were suffering from the abundance of the crops, and wheat, though rigidly protected, was very low in price. For three or four years I do not remember that any connection between chemistry and agriculture passed through my mind; but the remark of a gentleman (lord Dacre), who farmed near me, who pointed out that on one farm bone was invaluable for the turnip cr0p, and on another farm it was useless, attracted my attention 3. Good deal, especially as I had spent a good deal of money on bone without success. Somewhere about this time a drug broker inthe city of London asked me Whether I could make any use of precipitated gypsum and spent animal charcoal, both of which substances held at the time no market value. Some tons of these were sent down,_and as sulphuric acid was largely used by me in making chlorine gas, the combination of the two followed.

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