on Permanent Meadow Land. 557 



of each plot was weighed separately as /my, at the time of being 

 carted to the rick. The second crop was eaten off by sheep 

 having no other food ; each plot, according to the bulk of its 

 produce, having a given number penned upon a portion of it, the 

 area being extended, day by day, as the feed was eaten down. To 

 the further particulars of the feeding, and to the estimates made 

 of the produce of the second crop, we shall recur presently. 



The weight of hay (one cutting) taken from the different plots, 

 in each of the 3 seasons, is given in Table I., p. 558. 



Although the three seasons over wliich the experiments have 

 extended differed widely one from another in climatic characters, 

 the amounts of gross produce, under equal conditions of manuring, 

 were upon the whole much the same in the three seasons. There 

 was indeed a tendency to increase, from year to year, as the expe- 

 riments proceeded ; but this tendency is the more apparent when 

 the acreage amounts of dry matter, instead of gross produce of 

 hay merely, are considered. Viewed in this way, the increase 

 was moreover much greater in the second year as compared with 

 the first, than in the third as compared with the second. It was 

 too, perhaps upon the whole, the more marked where the most 

 liberal manuring was employed, and the largest crops thereby 

 obtained. On this point it should be remembered, that the 

 manure from the sheep consuming the second crop, so far as 

 it was due to the residual manures applied for the preceding 

 first crop, would be so much addition to that supplied for the 

 first crop of the succeeding season ; and that the addition would 

 be the greater, the more liberal had been the manuring, and the 

 larger the amount of after-grass. It would too, with excess of 

 manure, be somewhat cumulative, and relatively the more so, 

 the more excessive the manuring, and the greater the produce of 

 after-grass. The difference in the produce by the same manure, 

 in one season compared with another — at any rate the increase 

 in the amount of it in the second year of manuring over that 

 in the first — cannot therefore be wholly attributed to differences 

 in the characters of the seasons themselves. 



With regard to the seasons themselves, a few general observa- 

 tions may nevertheless be made. The growing period of the 

 first season, 1856, was generally much colder and wetter than 

 that of either 1857 or 1858. Its rain was in April above the 

 average, in May very large, and in the final month, June, but 

 small. The moisture in the atmosphere, as indicated by the 

 dew-point, was generally comparatively low ; and with this the 

 Tange of temperature above that point was also low. 



The grass season of 1857 ranged higher both in maximum and 

 in minimum temperatures, and also in mean range, than that of 

 1856 ; and in that of 1858 higher numbers still were registered 



in 



