194 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



of wliite clover, thai the late Duke of Portland 

 cousidcrcil it iinucccssary to sow the seeds. The 

 farmers of the uorth-casteru side of our island, who 

 had remarked the same thing, began even to suspect 

 that the seeds were imported in the crushed bones 

 of Holland. That the portion of the bone which is 

 thus so decidedly the food of clover is its phosphate 

 of lime, and not its decomposing organic matters, 

 seems to be also evidenced by several facts. One of 

 these has very recently been given by Mr. J. Dixon, 

 in his prize essay on the manuring of grass land 

 {Joio: Roy. Jg. Soc, vol. xix., p. 201). He there 

 remarks, "Of the permanent power of the raw bone 

 I can instance a case on land of which I was the 

 tenant for sixteen years : it was old turf, and had 

 been in the occupation of the proprietors for a long 

 time previous to my becoming tenant. The extent 

 of the land in question was little more than twenty 

 acres. About the year 1790 the then proprietor had 

 all the bones he could obtain in a commercial loca- 

 lity collected together, and broken with a heavy 

 hammer. No account was kept of the quantity or 

 value used on a given surface, but there is sufficient 

 evidence to show that an unusual dressing was 

 given. 



" The soil is of a close, tenacious character, lying 

 on a clayey subsoil. The subsoil did not contain 

 calcareous earth ; at least, it did not effervesce with 

 the spirit of salts (muriatic acid). Some parts of 

 the land had a more porous substratum, and were 

 sufficiently dry for pasture : these particular parts 

 were undoubtedly the most fertile land in the dis- 

 trict. Such of the surface as was wet had scarcely 

 any other vegetable covering than the earex and 

 others of the coarsest grasses. It is perhaps proper 

 here to state that this bone-dusted land has not 

 been broken-up or in tillage for a very long period. 

 On becoming tenant, I immediately set about drain- 

 ing the wet parts. In this operation we found, at 

 from five to eight inches from the surface, much 

 bone, in various states of decomposition : the large 

 pieces, when broken, appeared fresh inside. I felt 

 at the time some regret that much value must have 

 been lost for many years, and, as I then supposed^ 

 for ever lost, on account of the manure having been 

 in a soil saturated with water ever since it had been 

 laid on. However, before my draining operation had 

 been completed twelve months, the coarse herbage 

 began to disajipcar, and in its place appeared white 

 clover, marl clover, and others of the best pasture 

 grasses ; and, in the second summer after being 

 drained, the soil was equally luxuriant with the na- 

 turally dry parts of the land. It is now nearly 

 seventy years since this land was boned, and it is 

 still markedly luxuriant beyond any other grass land 

 in the same district." 



And in a subsequent page, when alluding to the 



boning of the grass land of Mr. Williamson, of Tar- 

 jtorlcy, Mr. Dixon observes, " Previous to boning, 

 the herbage on these pastures was of the poorest 

 kind imaginable — there being few of any plants ex- 

 cept the small earex. In the second summer after 

 boning, the earex had disappeared, and the pasture 

 had become long and thick-set with white clover, 

 cow grass, or marl clover, and trefoil." 



Other and still more carefully conducted experi- 

 ments serve to show the value of such a field of 

 enquiry. It is only in the just-published half-volume 

 of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 

 p. 552, that the experiments of Mr. J. B. Lawes 

 and Dr. Gilbert with different manures on perma- 

 nent meadow land have been reported. In these 

 trials, which were carried on during the years 1856, 

 1857, and 1858, the plan adopted was to apply a 

 number of different combinations of manuring sub- 

 stances, each, year after year, to the same plot of 

 land. And, in order to provide proper standards of 

 comparison, two plots were left continuously unma- 

 nured, and another portion was annually manured 

 with farmyard manure. The laud selected comprised 

 about six acres of the park at llothamsted, and it 

 had been under permanent grass for certainly more 

 than a century. The land is a somewhat heavy 

 loam, with a red-clay subsoil resting upon chalk, and 

 is very well naturally drained ; the area selected is 

 perfectly level ; and no fresh seed of any hind has 

 been sown, either within the period of the experi- 

 ments, or for many years previously. Early in 

 1856 nine plots, of half-an-acre each, were mea- 

 sured off for artificial manuring : two plots of a 

 quarter of an acre each to be left unmanurcd ; and 

 two other plots of a quarter of an acre each to be 

 manured annually with farmyard dung. In 1858, 

 four other plots of one-sixth of an acre were appro- 

 priated to trials with nitrate of soda. The result 

 upon the produce of hay by the fourteen different 

 applications will be found in the following table, 

 which gives the manures applied, and the average 

 produce of hay during three years, iu tons, hundred- 

 weights, and quarters. The manures were applied 

 broadcast from the middle of Pebruary to the 31st 

 of March ; the nitrate of soda, in April ; the farm- 

 yard dung and the sawdust, in the previous Novem- 

 ber or December : — 



tons, cwts.qrs. 



1. Unmanurcd . . . .1 3 1 



2. Unmanurcd (duplicate plot at the 



further end of the series) . . 1 4 2 



3. 2,000 lbs. sawdust . . .1 2 



4. 200 lbs. each suljihate and muriate 



ammonia (good samjiles of the 



salts so named in commerce) . 1 15 



5. 2,000 lbs. sawdust, and 200 lbs. 



each sulphate and muriate am- 

 monia 1 15 



