The Wheat Problem by William CrookesReview by: L. L. P.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Jan., 1918), pp. 104-105Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2340576 .

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104 Reviews of Statistical and Economic Books. [Jan.

Iabour, and the future of production, and of agriculture. For every oo establishments working before the war, only 48 were open in

August, 1914, but the number rose steadily to 76 by July, 1916, and 89 by January, 1917. The account of the activities of inventors makes interesting reading, even to the extravagances of a humani- tarian bayonet which has no point and on impact opens and im- prisons the enemy in a circle of steel! Much stress is laid on the " coal problem " and all the hopes of a rise to industrial eminence are based upon the possibilities of electricity through water power. Reminiscent of our own conditions is the section on the alcohol question and the temperance movement, or the account of the "capture " of the toy and dolls' head industries.

In the third section, chapters on the cost and finance of the war, and the rise in the' cost of living and attempts to check it, complete an interesting and most informing volume. J.C.S.

6.-The Wheat Problem. By Sir William Crookes. (Third Edition.) xvi + 100 pp., small 8vo. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1917. Price 38. 6d. net.

With an Introduction by the present Food Controller, and a supplementary chapter on future wheat supplies by Sir Henry Rew, Sir William Crookes, in a third edition of his Presidential Address deliveredto the British Association nearly twentyyears ago, has brought up to date the statistical information contained therein. The question with which he dealt on that occasion has not lost but gained in importance in the interval; and at the present moment it is, in the fullest sense of the words, a " live probleml." The moral pressed in 1898 that in a future measurably near the populations of the world would be confronted by considerable difficulty in satis- fying their necessary demands for the staple food of civilised man has certainly not ceased to be pertinent; and in a recent number of a quarterly periodical published in this country a writer forcibly contended that the Germans, " taking time by the forelock," had, among other inducenments, been prompted to make war by the motive of securing for themselves, in the complete control of adequate sources of wheat-supply, a favourable position in the impending inevitable economic struggle for the means of existence. Nor, with reference to this plain warning-which was interpreted not unnaturally, though with some excess in some quarters, as " alarmist "-has the subsequenit score of years failed to render more manifest and feasible the scientific possibility then indicated of bringing forward fresh expedients to mitigate or solve the crucial need. The potency, no less than the necessity, of nitrogenous stimulus to cereal growth has been more clearly demonstrated by research and by experiment in agricultural chemistry, and, as Sir William shows, noticeable progress has been achieved in the par- ticular direction which he then emphasised. That LQrd Rholiidda calls summarily the " fixation of the atmospheric nitrogen."

His vigorous Introduction was penned apparently before he assumed his present office, with its perplexing obligation of pressing

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1918.] Reviews of Statistical and Economic Books. 105

home unpalatable truith; but he is, we must agree, usiilg lainguage strictly appropriate to the immediate crisis in this country when he mentions as one promising niethod of escape from the serious dilemma by which we are now faced the extended and intensified use for farming practice of the latest results of scientific work in agricultural laboratories. If ruimour be correct, characteristic employment of the resources of chemical invention in the manner recommended by Sir Willianm Crookes has been in fact attempted during the pressure of the War as well as earlier by ouir chief enemy in the present contest, and her poorer soils have stood in more imperative need than ours of such fertilising aids. It should, however, be remarked, in concluding this brief review of an opportune re-issue of a notable address, more popular in character, and therefore more intelligible to the lay public than many of those proceeding from the same official chair, that Sir Heinry Rew inclines, as we uriderstand, in his informing supplementary chapter, to a more cheering view than that on which the greater stress is laid in the main body of the book. He shows instructively the conspicuous results of economic inducement in enIlarging the exported output of the chief existing wheat areas of the world, and this consideration, we have no doubt, must be given its ftll weight in a complete appraisement of the various factors of the immediate and the future problem. Yet the whole matter, we feel, suggests that Malthus, excessively maligned and extravagantly praised in his day, wrote for all time as well as for his own contemporaries. With the later qualifications of the ahsolute emphasis of his first version added by him in the second and subsequent editions of his essav, he miiay still be read with advantage and appreciation, in the fresh light shed by Sir William Crookes in 1898 and 1917, and by the collaborators of that dis- tinguis1bed scientist. L.L.P.

7.-The Book of the Rothamsted Experimtents. By A. D. Hall. Second Edition, revised by E. J. Russell. xl + 332 pp., 8vo. London: John Murray, 1917. Price ios. 6d. net.

In connection with agriculture, as with other departments of economic activity, the eager thoughts of many confident reformers are now directed towards " reconstruction " to be handled when the War has ended and peace has been restored between this country and its allies and their foes. Ambitious, and, as we might expect, biased or interested, plans have been advanced in different quarters, which may, or may not, be intrinsically desirable or be capable of fiy11 or incomplete practical realisation. But already, on some points at least, no doubt can be entertained; and among such demonstrated truths the moral conveyed by the full authoritative record furnished in the volume now before us must, we are sure, be placed. It is, too, a lesson which was beiing taught by those who filled positions of repute in agricultural circles before the present conflict, when agrarian change, if not revolution, was being discussed in less informed and more polemical coteries. It is, furthermore, a sugges- tion that has been since driven hom-ie among a larger proportion of

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