328 



EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS — EEPORT FOR 1881. 



The preceding table shows the quantities of grain and straw 

 produced. 



It cannot be said that these results corroborate those obtained 

 in the large plots, and careful examination shows that there are 

 anomalies that can scarcely be explained except on the ground 

 of inequalities of soil. It is perhaps too much to expect that 

 results obtained upon an artificial soil such as this should be 

 quite reliable the first year, and we shall probably have to go 

 on for a year or two before we shall find much help from the 

 cropping on these miniature plots. 



Owing to the extreme lateness of last season, and to the una- 

 voidable delay wdiich occurred in the fitting up of the Society's 

 laboratory, the chemical analysis of the oat crop is far from 

 complete ; but the full details of this, along with a resume of the 

 experiments during the first rotation, will appear in the next 

 report. 



Experiment on the Marquis of Tw^eeddale's Home Farm of 



Yestermains. 



Turnip Crop 1881. 



The six experiments reported below are a repetition of those 

 which w^ere reported in the last year's vohime of the Transac- 

 tions, and they axe duplicates of six phosphate plots upon the 

 Society's stations. The object of the experiments is to test the 

 value of soluble and insoluble phosphates as a manure for the 

 turnip crop upon the soil at Yester. The results of last year's 

 experiments were very decisively in favour of soluble phos- 

 phates, the increase of crop obtained by their use being nearly 

 50 per cent. As no other experiments recently carried out in 

 Scotland showed so great a difference in the crop-producing 

 value of these two forms of manure, it was considered expedient 

 to repeat the experiments this year on another part of the farm. 

 The manures employed w^ere bone meal, coprolites, and mineral 

 phosphate dissolved and undissolved, and the following are the 

 weights per acre produced, as communicated by Mr. Swinton, 

 under whose care the experiments were put : — 



