EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS — BARLEY CROP, 1887. 219 



applied, yet there are occasions, such as in laying down land to 

 pasture, when such slowly acting substances as horn dust and 

 dried blood would be of the greatest advantage. 



Sulphate of potash (19) has always been superior to muriate 

 of potash (20), and it continues to maintain its position. Of 

 the next three plots, 28, 29, and 30, there is little to record, 

 further than that a superphosphate, with 10 per cent, soluble 

 phosphate, does not leave behind so much for the good of the 

 next two crops as those more thoroughly dissolved. Plot 35, 

 which received its nitrogenous manure in the slowly-acting 

 form of rajje dust, and used to be below average, is now well 

 above average, and improving its lead. There is evidently a 

 considerable residue of it in the soil yet. 



We now come to the seven plots at the end of the diagram. 

 During the two rotations these plots were deficiently manured, 

 as described in Table II. ; but in 1886 they got one manuring 

 with the ingredients that had hitherto been denied them. This 

 was done to see what residual amount of the ingredients applied 

 year after year were still in the soil, but prevented from coming 

 into operation for want of the special substances in which they 

 were deficient. Had this been the last experimental crop the 

 complementary manuring would have been repeated, but, in 

 anticipation of the grass experiments, all manures were with- 

 held last year. That one manuring in 1886 has no doubt 

 dulled the sharpness of the indications due to deficient mauur- 

 ing, but the partial manuring still tells its story very plainly. 

 Plot 11 — no phosphates — shows that phosphoric acid is the 

 one ingredient that can least be spared from a manure. That 

 this plot should be better in 1887 than in 1879 is doubtless 

 due to the one dose of phosphates applied to it the former 

 year. But for the complementary manures applied in 1886, 

 all these deficiently manured plots would have been on a 

 somewhat lower level. Plot 12, which received hone ash 

 alone, is better than plot 18, which received nitrate of soda 

 alone. The continuous dosing with nitrate of soda alone, 

 year after year, has reduced that plot to a low level of fertility. 

 Despite the one dose of phosphate and potash it received 

 in 1886, it is not showing any marked sign of recuperation, 

 and it seems probable that, but for that interference with 

 the original plan of manuring, it would have borne the 

 lowest crop on the station in 1887. Plot 22, which was 

 all along manured with potash salts alone, suffered positive 

 injury fi:'om the treatment ; but now that the manure is being 

 withheld, it is rapidly recovering. Plot 27, which has from the 

 beginning been entirely unnianured, is now the poorest plot 

 on the station ; and the fact that it is not so deficient as it was 

 in 1883 must be ascribed to the abundant sunshine of 1887, 



