THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



393 



The period of the trials included seasons 1856, 1857, 

 and 1858. The soil is a somewhat heavy loam, with a 

 red clay subsoil, resting upon chalk ; and although not 

 artificially, is very well naturally drained. The land 

 selected comprised about six acres of the park, which 

 had been under permanent grass for more than a cen- 

 tury; and the general mode of previous treatment 

 appears to have been to manure occasionally with farm- 

 yard duDg, road scrapings, and the like, and sometimes 

 with guano or other purchased manures. One crop of 

 hay was removed annually, amounting in weight to from 

 14- to 2 tons per acre ; and tha second crop was always 

 eaten off by sheep. The trial plots were 17 in number, 

 and of these nine of half an acre each and four of one- 

 sixth of an acre each were appropriated to manuring 

 with artificials, two plots of a quarter of an acre each 

 were manured annually with farm-yard dung, and other 

 two of similar size were continuously unmanured. The 

 following table contains the results obtained from seven 

 of the plots selected by the experimentalists themselves, 

 as more especially illustrative of the general conclusions 

 deducible from the investigation. 







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Here, on comparing firstly the annual products of 



plot No. 16, manured with 14 tons of farm-yard 

 dung in each year, with the unmanured plots Nos. 1 and 

 2, an increase due to the manuring is seen of IG cwt. 

 24 lbs., a return very far, indeed, from adequate to re- 

 pay the operation. But in this, as in other instances of 

 Rothamsted experimental investigation, mere pecuniary 

 considerations are disregarded, the sole object of all 

 of them being to determine only the philosophical 

 effects of the manurial substances ; in other words, to 

 ascertain what influence they had in promoting the 

 growth of cultivated vegetation, or the reverse. 



Now, in the second place, it were simply a truism 

 here to remark, that different manures very differently 

 affect the quantity of yield in the crops to which they 

 are applied. This is known to every one. But no less 

 certain it is, although too little considered, that the 

 (^«<a?e7rt<ii;e influence of various manurial substances ad- 

 ministered to the various constituency of pastures — in 

 other words, the tendencies of different kinds of fertili- 

 zers to control the I'clative proportions of choice and 

 inferior vegetation in grass land, is a subject which has 

 never received anything like adequate investigation. 

 Many striking instances could be collected from the 

 journals, to show how great, for good or evil, this qua- 

 litative influence is. To enter on them at present, how- 

 ever, would be to transgress our limits, and we shall 

 be content to expatiate on those only which constitute 

 the differential results of the experiments under consi- 

 deration, and which, in fact, are highly illustrative of 

 this important subject. To this end, one of the tables 

 presented by the experimentalists, No. IX. of part se- 

 cond, vol. XX., p. 250, forms an invaluable aid, express- 

 ing as it does, not only the names of the different spe- 

 cies of plants which occupied the ground at the outset of 

 the trials, but the per centage proportion in which each 

 of these aboriginal species prevailed. Nay more ; in 

 each of the seven selected instances transferred to our 

 prior table, No. IV., the same classified enumeration 

 was made in the last year of the experiments ; and thus, 

 by comparing the manured with the normal unmanured 

 species, it was ascertained, as, indeed, was to be antici- 

 pated, that mere gross quantity of produce not alone 

 was diff'erently aSected by the different substances ex- 

 hibited as dressings ; but that the relative per-centage 

 proportions numerically examined between species, and 

 species was very variously controlled. Now this being 

 so, and it being also true, as already noted preliminarily, 

 that all the vegetable denizens of the pasture, field, or 

 meadow, are not of equal economic value, it is essen- 

 tially important to know what the behaviour of each 

 kind of the experimental manures was, in promoting or 

 repressing the growth of the good or bad herbage ; and 

 without further preface there shall next be presented a 

 table of the constituent members of those tribes which 

 clothed the ground in its normal, i. e., unmanured con- 

 dition. 



Table V. — Showing the conBtituent Plants of the Experi- 

 mental Ground in its natural or v.nmanured condition. 



Individuals falling under the denomination op 

 Choice Species.— See before (Table I.) 



1. Grasses, 

 Perennial rye-grasa. 

 Smooth meadow-grass. 

 Rough cocksfoot. 



2. Lerjumens, 

 Perennial red-clover. 

 Birdsfoot trefoil. 



3. Miscellaneous Species. 

 Rib grata, 



Yarrow. 



G 6 2 



