568 Report of Experiments with different Manures 



crop, yet, the amount of these constituents supplied by its means 

 is proportionally much less active within a given time than that 

 provided in the artificial combinations. As, however, permanent 

 meadow-land, especially when attached to an arable farm, does 

 not, as practice goes, so much as a matter of course, come in for 

 a due periodic supply of farmyard manure as does the land 

 under rotation, it becomes far more necessary in its case to 

 bestow special consideration that the mineral constituents be not 

 exhausted, than in that of rotation crops under ordinary good 

 management. In fact, the grass-land of the arable farm is but 

 too frequently looked upon as the legitimate sphere for robbery 

 for the other crops. Indeed, considering the nature of the 

 exhaustion of permanent grass-land generally, when mown for 

 hay, and at the same time bearing in mind the character of the 

 artificial manures, which are, in point of economy, at the com- 

 mand of the farmer, it would seem that the permanent condition of 

 such land should be kept up by farmyard manure, stable dung, 

 town manures, and the like, and the active growth aided, year 

 by year, by the so-called artificial, nitrogenous — or, better still, 

 nitrogenous and phosphatic — manures. Where hay is grown for 

 the supply of a neighbouring town, the (in the above sense) per- 

 manent condition of the land is very generally maintained by 

 town manures of some kind brought by the return carriage. But 

 where hay is grown on an arable farm, and is mown for con- 

 sumption by the stock (or, still worse, for sale), the return is 

 but too often by no means so complete. The question of keeping 

 up the fertility of grass-land by sewage, or other irrigation, is 

 one of course of entirely separate consideration from that now 

 before the reader. 



Before giving a summary enumeration of the results and con- 

 clusions thus far indicated, it will be well to direct attention to 

 the relative, and, as far as they can be estimated, the actual 

 amounts of after-grass yielded, on the differently manured plots. 



In Table II. are given : — 



In the 1st Division — the actual number of sheep th:'t were 

 put upon each plot of after-grass, and the actual number of days 

 they were fed upon it, in each of the three seasons of the experi- 

 ments ; 



In the 2nd Division — the number of sheep calculated to be 

 kept per acre, on each plot for one week, in each of the individual 

 seasons, and on the average of the three seasons ; and 



In the last column of the Table — the estimated average annual 

 amount of hay per acre, to which the after-grass consumed would 

 be equivalent, reckoning the sheep to eat grass equal in amount 

 to 16 lbs. of hay per head, per week. 



Calculating the after-grass into its assumed equivalent of hay, 



as 



