“ Your investigations into the applications of chemistry to the cultivation of crops and the feeding of live stock have been of the highest possible importance to the practical agriculturist, and the sincere thanks of the agricultural community at large are due and are hereby tendered to you for the scientific skill and indefatigable industry which you have brought to bear upon the conduct of the Rothamsted researches. ”

“ Lawes and Gilbert have been engaged for the last 24 years in a systematic series of researches upon agricultural chemistry, with a view of determining by exact experiments, the principles, chemical and physiological, which are involved in the general and fundamental process of successful agriculture. ”

“ Gilbert referred to the coldness and the doubt with which the results of their earlier experiments where received, especially when they departed from orthodox lines. Early prejudices, however, died away, and eventually those who had originally been their opponents became their advocates and supporters. Agriculture, he said, more perhaps than any other art or industry, depended upon the intelligent application not of one but of many branches of science ”