The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-04-16
By HAYDEN CHURCH

toes have even been grown in pure sand
 watered with tine peat extract. Of onions
 grown in soil mixed with the bacterized
 peat that weighed between three and four
 times as much as those grown in the
 oi air ary way. So efficient, indeed, Is this
 plant Bovril," as Professor Bottomley
 himself called it in talking to me, that
 when it is steeped in water, liquid
 manure is obtained in which plants will
 grow. It has been said that, by its use, wheat could be grown on a railroad track, and when I asked it's inventor 1T |, this was true, his reply was that it could thus be grown anywhere.
 There is abundant evidence that the
 main points in connection with Profes- sor Bottomey's discovery are we'll known in the United States and Canada, for, when l called on him in his laboratory
 at Kings college, whose professor of
 botany he is, I found him largely en- trenched behind piles of correspondence which has come to him from the other side of the Atlantic, from pretty well every state in the union and most parts
 of Canada, asking when his 'bacterfzed peat or "humogen'' will be placed on the market. This correspondence makes
 it evident that big interests in America are keenly interested, and it may be said, without mentioning details that one of the latest of these letters comes from a prominent United States consul in this country, who gives the names of nine big companies who have communicated with him. to ask for the latest available de- tails in connection with the miracle-work- ing peat,
 "The answer to all these queries" said
 Professor Bottomley, lis there is no like lihood of our 'bacterized peat being put on the market for sometime to come, though my rights are protected. On the other hand humogen' will, I hope, be available for agricultural experiments M
 this country within a fortnight's time.
 Let me make the situation quite clear
 to everybody interested. We haven't tried
 the stuff out on a big scale yet, and until
 we do there will be no question of mar
 keting it. It isn't case of making a fortune and then clearing out. We be- lieve that this is pretty big thing, but until we have proved it, we are going to
 say nothing at all. It's efficacy in horti- culture has been proved up to the hilt.
 At Kew Gardens, the state-owned center of horticulture in this country, to name only one of many places, they have been experimenting with it for three years, and they have never had failure. But 1t Is in connection with agriculture that we believe it is destined to play the biggest part and, up to now, we have no means of experimenting with it largely. But within two weeks of the present date we ! shall have.
 What has happened is this,' Profes- sor Bottomley went on. For the period of the war, so far as this country Is con Icerned, I have waived all my rights and patents in connection with bacterized peat. And I now have entered into an arrangement with the city of Manchester whereby, for three years, they undertake r to produce peat treated by my process 'on two large estates there which they 'control The estates are those of Chat
 Moss and Darlington Moss, and together
 they have an acreage of something like
 4000, including at least 800 of pure peat.
 Here the raw peat will be turned into
 'humogen' under my direction-a process
 that now occupies only six days-and will then be available for agricultural experf-