EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS — REPORT FOR 1879. 289 



nitrate of soda and potash salts. Jt was as nearly as possible an 

 imitation of Peruvian guano, and it produced a fairly good crop. 

 The umnanured plot (27) is not the poorest on tlie station, as 

 one would have expected, thougli probably it is a mistake 

 in such a series of experiments tt) expect it, as certain kinds of 

 nuuiurial interference may easily do more harm than good, but 

 it is sufficiently poor to show that the soil on the station i.s 

 a poor one, and well suited for experiment. 



The next three plots are intended to give some information as 

 to tiie extent to which it is expedient to dissolve phusphates, and, 

 so far as the experiment has yet gone, the indications given seem 

 to favour the opinion that there is a limit beyond which it is 

 inexpedient to dissolve jiliosphatcs, if intended to be applied to 

 the soil unaccompanied by other undissolved phosphatic manure. 

 ]^ut it may be said of this experiment, as of almost every other 

 on the station, that it is not yet so far advanced as to yield any 

 precise information. 



The experiments which follow to test the efficacy of some of 

 the manures selected from other plots on the station, when 

 applied in quantities half as much and double as much as are 

 applied to the original plots, are of interest, chiefly in reference 

 to the needs of the particular soil of the station itself ; but as 

 each of these plots receives the same total amount of manure, 

 though differently distributed, it serves as a check upon the plot 

 of which it is a duplicate. It will be some time before definite 

 practical information can be obtained from the cropping in these 

 plots. 



On comparing the produce of the barley crop with that of the 

 preceding crop of turnips, it will be seen that the differences in 

 the amoiints of grain produced on the various jilots do not 

 always correspond with the differences in the weights of turnips. 

 The weights of straw, however, correspond with these in their 

 increase and decrease much more closely, and this is what we 

 ought to expect when we consider that the straw of barley is 

 that part of the crop which corresponds in great measure to the 

 bulb of the turnip, which is a swollen stem producing buds and 

 leaves from its upper surface, and genuine roots from its lower 

 surface. 



Accordingly, we find that those forms of manure which favour 

 the g^o^vth of bulbs in the turnip crop also tend to increase the 

 amomit of straw in the cereal crop. 



In the last colmnn of the table are a series of numbers indi- 

 cating the weight of 100 straws, picked one by one at random 

 from the samples sent in — each sample itself consisting of small 

 handfuls taken from time to time during the threshing. These 

 hundred straws were selected for analysis, but it was thought 

 that their weights, when taken in connection with the total 



T 



