EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS — BARLEY CROP, 1887. 217 



weather during the growing season. A wet summer and a late 

 harvest are the conditions which are favourable to the produc- 

 tion of light grain, for they cause an aftergrowth of poor, thin 

 plants that have no time to fill and ripen. 



The important thing to look to in endeavouring to form some 

 estimate of the relative fertility of the various crops is the 

 total yield of grain. It will be seen from Table II. that the 

 crop was, over all, a small one ; but it must be remembered that 

 the soil is a very poor one to work upon, and under ordinary 

 farming conditions it could not be expected to produce more 

 than about 40 bushels per acre on an average of seasons. Last 

 year the plots which had in former years received a full manur- 

 ing produced about 27 bushels of barley per acre, or scarcely 

 three-fourths of a crop. Considering the dryness of the sum- 

 mer, the deficiency of straw, and the fact that the crop was 

 unmanured, and that an unmanured crop of turnips had 

 been entirely removed from the land the previous year, it is 

 somewhat remarkable that the produce of grain was so con- 

 siderable. 



In order to gain a clear idea of the relative amounts of 

 remanent fertility on the various plots, it is necessary to com- 

 pare the results, not only among themselves, but with the 

 results obtained when the station was under barley in former 

 years, and for that purpose diagram V. will be of much assist- 

 ance. The vertical lines of the chart represent the various 

 plots of the station, and they are numbered along the 

 top and bottom. The horizontal lines represent pounds of 

 grain per acre, and each line represents 100 lbs. more than the 

 one below it. The plots are arranged on the chart in the fol- 

 lowing manner: — From No. 1 along to No. 35 all the plots 

 received in former years complete manures containing the three 

 constituents, phosphoric acid, potash, and nitrogen in exactly 

 the same amount. From the next three plots one or other of 

 these ingredients was omitted, from the next three plots two 

 of these constituents were omitted, and from the last plot 

 manures have for ten years been entirely withheld. 



The first thing that strikes one in comparing the three lines 

 indicating the amounts of produce on the different plots is that 

 the crop of 1879 and 1887 are not very different in total 

 amount, and that they are both far inferior to that of 1883. 

 The crop of 1879 had been manured, and so had the previous 

 turnip crop, which was the first experimental crop grown at 

 the station. 



The different produce of the various plots was due to their 

 different manuring, and it will be seen that, with some notable 

 exceptions, the ups and downs of the lines indicating the amount 

 of crop in the three different years have a pretty constant relation 



