lo May, 191 1.] Itifiuence of Manures applied to Pastures. 313 



It will be seen that the temperature of the cream was reduced by 22° Fahr. 

 If colder water had been available, the result would have been propor- 

 tionatel}' better. Only 3 gallons of water were used for every 10 gallons 

 of milk separated. The coolers are made in two sizes. The price of 

 one large enough to treat the cream from a 45-gallon separator is 



£2 I OS. 



THE INFLUENCE ON THE PRODUCTION OF MUTTON 

 OF MANURES APPLIED TO PASTURES. 



William Soincrville, M.A., D.Sc, Professor of A^i^riculture in the 

 University of Oxford. 



Abstract by 



Alfred J. Ewart, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.L.S., Government Botanist of Victoria 

 and Professor of Botany and Plant Physiology in the Melbourne 

 University. 



The foregoing work, issued as a supplement to the Journal of the Board 

 of Agriculture, is of so much importance that it .seems worth while to 

 publi.sh an abstract of it for the benefit of graziers in Victoria. The 

 e.xperiments were carried out upon a quite unusual plan, namely, by treat- 

 ing pastures in various ways and weighing the sheep grazing upon these 

 pastures at regular intervals of time. In this way the nutritious properties 

 of the herbage are tested equally with its bulk, whereas the ordinary 

 method of testing a hay crop by bulk or weight alone, may frequently 

 yield misleading results, when a particular manure or mode of treatment 

 has encouraged a large growth of the more innutritious grasses. 



The experiments in question were begun in 1896, and have been con- 

 tinued up to the date of preparation of the present report. They were 

 carried out at various stations in different parts of Great Britain, and 

 there can be little doubt that the broad general principles established dur- 

 uig the progress of the work, will apply with comparatively little modifi- 

 cation all the world over. One of the most important tests was as to the 

 effect of feeding cake to the sheep, both from the point of view of its 

 direct effect on the animals in seasons when they received it, and also of 

 the indirect effects showing subsequently on the pasture, as the result of the 

 manuring it had received by the cake residues. It was found that, in the 

 conversion of store-tegs into mutton by summer grazing, the use of cake 

 all through the .season resulted in a direct loss, and not only was this the 

 case, but even when the after effects upon the pastures were included, the 

 net gain was not sufficient to make the practice appreciably profitable in 

 the most favourable cases, and in the others still resulted in a dead loss. 

 Professor Somerville concludes that, if a pasture is so poor that it will 

 not fatten stock, it is little or no use attempting to make good the deficiency 

 by the use of cake or other artificial food, but that the first thing to trv 

 is whether the grass land responds to treatnKMit with |)h(5sphates, and if 

 so, to dress with basic slag fairly heavily. 5 to 10 cwt. per acre not being 

 at all exce.ssivc. After such manuring, the u.se of cake is actually antago- 

 nistic to the improvement of the pasture, since the nitrogen in the manurial 

 residues of the cake encourages gr.isses rather than the clovers, which the 

 basic slag brings to their niaxinuini (lc\<'lopniont. 



