554 Report of Experiments with different Manures 



Thus, Wheat, Barley, and Oats are of the Graminaceous family, 

 and have, therefore, so far, their points of close relationship with 

 the so-called " Natural Grasses." Beans, Peas, and the culti- 

 vated Clovers, Lucerne, &c., of our rotations, are, on the other 

 hand, of the Leguminous family ; and hence their relationship to 

 the clovers, and allied plants, of our Meadows and Pastures. It 

 is true that the circumstances of growth, and the treatment, of the 

 plants composing the mixed herbage of our Pastures and Meadows, 

 are widely different from those of the allied plants — especially of 

 the seeding ones — in our arable fields. In the one case, too, the 

 plants are chiefly perennial, and in the other chiefly annual. It 

 might well be expected, therefore, that, notwithstanding their 

 natural alliances, crops which differ so widely both in certain 

 comparatively incidental conditions of growth, and in some 

 intrinsic qualities, should, at the same time, manifest somewhat 

 different manurial requirements. 



Among the most interesting of the points incidentally brought 

 out by the experiments which form the subject of the present 

 Report, is the striking confirmation which the results afford 

 of the (so to speak) special adaptation, in a course of prac- 

 tical agriculture, of certain constituents of manure, to the 

 growth of certain of the crops of our rotations, accordingly as 

 they belong to the one or to the other of the two great families of 

 plants above referred to. That is to say, the comparative action 

 of different descriptions of manure, upon the development of the 

 different plants of the mixed herbage of our Meadow, was found 

 to accord with, and further to illustrate, points independently esta- 

 blished regarding the manurial requirements, and the mutual rela- 

 tions, of the plants of our rotations to which they are botanically 

 allied. At the same time, independently of the difference in 

 other conditions of growth and management, the permanent and 

 alternating crops generally differ so widely, both in regard to the 

 amount of certain constituents which they respectively remove 

 from the land, and to the proportion of these which will probably 

 be in due course returned in the home manures, that the character 

 of the supplementary manures required by even much allied 

 crops, must obviously be somewhat different in the two cases. 



To turn to the experiments themselves : 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 unmanured, and another portion was annually 

 manured with farm-yard manure. 



The land selected comprised about G acres of the Park at 

 Rothamsted, and it had been under permanent grass for certainly 



