The Principles and Practice of Yield Trials

Abstract

IT is now nearly twenty years since a considerable number of agronomists in Great Britian have reached the opinion that agricultural field trials, whether concerned primarily with manures or with varieties, if they were to afford practical guidance to the farmer, must be carried out with increased precision. The important preliminary work of exploring the variability of yield by uniformity trials was performed for England in two excellent investigations by Wood and Stratton at Cambridge r and by Mercer and Hall at Rothamsted. At about the same time, by what is not necessarily a co-incidence, a fundamental advance in the theory of errors, which renders possible the exact treatment of the evidence of small samples, was made by that anonymous genius who disguises his identity under the pseudonym of “Student.” Since that time the work of applying the knowledge gained to the practical refinement of agricultural experimentation has been actively carried on by Dr. Beaven at Warminster, and more recently in the Statistical and Field Department at Rothamsted; it would scarcely be an exaggeration to regard “Student” as the spiritual father of both developments.

The Principles and Practice of Yield Trials.

By F. L. Engledow G. Udny Yule. Pp. 78. (London: The Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, 1926.) 2s.