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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



logical necessity, to prevent the land from lapsing into 

 sterility and the produce into degeneration. Never- 

 theless, within the last twenty or thirty years this sup- 

 posed infallible basis of catholic rotation husbandry has 

 signally falsified its own pretensions, by itself intro- 

 ducing wide-spread morbidity in the very plants whose 

 alternate culture with corn was deemed indispensable to 

 undegenerate cereal vegetation ; and at the present 

 moment the best tillage-husbandmen are those who have 

 most emancipated themselves from the trammels of this 

 traditional empiricism, and who most entertain the con- 

 viction, that if as good and cheap manure could extra- 

 neously be procured, as what is yielded by the 

 indigenous source of the cattle court, it is not necessary 

 longer to combine cattle and corn husbandry together, 

 simply because it was once deemed advantageous, on 

 now effete manurial considerations, to do so. 



But although it thus is probably true that few of the 

 better class of modern farmers would shrink from en- 

 tering on new paths of practice, did there exist any clear 

 lights to guide them in a new course, a large amount of 

 experiment and tentative practice has yet to be per- 

 formed before any fresh system can be substituted for 

 that which is passing away. That various commercial 

 substances, natural or factitious in their origin, applied 

 alone, ensure a single good crop, or even may exhibit a 

 certain amount of continuous fertility, is doubted by none; 

 but whether any procurable extraneous manurial is com- 

 petent to maintain a farm in full bearing from one course 

 of rotation to another, without any aid from the accus- 

 tomed cattle-court supply, constitutes a problem which 

 has never yet been industrially solved. Other collateral 

 questions besides this one could readily be propounded, 

 but to it we shall restrict ourselves at present, because 

 upon it the experiments selected for examination in the 

 following columns _are especially instructive. They are 

 reported in the third branch of that experimental Essay 

 by Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert, published in vol. xviii, 

 of the Roy. Ag. Soc. Jour, (1857), and which contains 

 also the report of the barley experiments already com- 

 mented on in prior numbers of this magazine. 



In point of general design, the trials now to be nar- 

 rated consisted in subjecting six plots of land forming 

 part of a close in the Rothamsted home-farm, called 

 Agdell-field, each to a separate but parallel and contem- 

 poraneous course of four years' rotation, thrice repeated 

 between the years 1849 and 1857iuclusive. The species 

 of crops grown were the same in each, namely, turnips, 

 barley, clover (but on tlie clover failing in the second 

 course, beans or bare fallow in its place), and wheat. 

 Divided into groups of two each, one pair of the plots 

 received no manure of any kind, either at the beginning 

 or during the progress of the experiments. In another 



pair, the turnips of each course were dressed with super • 

 phosphate of lime alone .- the third pair being treated 

 in like manner, but toith mixed alkalies, ammoniacal 

 salts, and rape-cake, in addition to superphosphate. 

 Between the individuals of the several pairs there was 

 this important difference of management, that in one— 

 throughout all the three courses — the turnips were 

 carted off the land ; in the other, they were consumed 

 by sheep on the spot. 



1. Of the two unmanured plots. 



The following table shows the results of the experi- 

 ments in this pair. Unfortunately the returns of only 

 the turnip and barley crops were reported by the experi- 

 mentalists. 



Table I., showing the results of experiments in the unhanubed 



PLOTS. 



A -Plot from which the V^-iP'^' B^^^^^^^^^^ 

 tunups tvcre carted off^. ^^^^^ corn). 



Courses. 

 1st. Seasons 1S49-1852.. 

 2nd. „ 1853-185S,. 

 3rd. „ 1857-1860.. 



Means . . . . 



B. — Plot on whic'ii the tur- 

 nips were fed on the land. 

 Courses. 



1st. Seasons 1849-1852.. 



2nd. „ 1853-1856.. 



3rd. „ 1857-1860.. 



Means.... 



i 41 01 



Clover. 



B. P. 



B. P. 



? 



Here, then, in the rapidly-decreasing produce shown 

 in the turnip column, is presented an instance of 

 the rapidity with which land not well adapted for 

 turnips (for such is the character assigned by the 

 experimentalists to the Uothamsted soil) suffers 

 depletion of the normal supply of nutriment re- 

 quired by that voracious plant in its cultivated state — a 

 circumstance contrasting very strikingly with the steadi- 

 ness with which the barley maintained a fair yield 

 throughout all the three courses. Supplied by no ad- 

 ventitious fertilizing aid, the roots degenerated from 

 bulbs of ordinary size to those no bigger than a radish, 

 whilst the bailey crops in each alternate year exhibited 

 a very abundant yield. 



2. Of the two plots in which each course was manured 

 with superphosphate of lime alone, applied quadrennially 

 with the turnips. 



Table III. 

 Comparative Abstract of the Unmanured Plots and of those manured with Superphosphate of Lime. 



