RENOVATING GRASS LANDS. 259 



Plot 14 received the same minerals as Plot 7, but with the addition of 550 pounds of 

 nitrate of soda, which, when placed upon the land, would probably cost about $20; this, 

 added to the cost of the manure of Plot 7, would amount to $32 or $33 per acre. The in 

 crease of hay obtained by these manures was 4,000 pounds. It must, however, be observed 

 that I have made no charge for the cost of labor attending the cutting and converting this 

 increased produce into hay; I might also add that I have taken, as the basis for comparison, 

 the lowest in produce of the two unmanured acres. 



During the whole period of twenty years the 112 English or 125^- United States tons of 

 dung had produced 35,000 pounds of increased produce of hay, which is equivalent to a pro 

 duce of about 280 pounds of hay to each ton of dung of 2,000 Ibs. ; but the crops of the last 

 six years prove that the efficacy of the dung is by no means yet exhausted. It is not in my 

 power to place a value upon dung, as the cost turns entirely upon the carriage. I live 25 

 miles from London, and my farm is one mile from a station. The cost of dung by rail is 60 

 cents per English ton; delivery on my land costs an additional 42 cents making altogether 

 $1.02. 



The result of these experiments makes it somewhat doubtful whether hay can be grown 

 profitably by means of artificial manures applied to permanent pasture. With us hay is gen 

 erally grown near large towns, and the same conveyance which takes it to market brings 

 back the manure at little or no cost. 



Compared with its selling price, hay removes more of the soil constituents from the land 

 than most of our other salable products. One hundred pounds of hay will remove nearly as 

 much nitrogen and much more mineral matter than one hundred pounds of wheat. These 

 considerations must all be studied when the question comes as to the profitable application of 

 expensive manures. &quot;While, therefore, the evidence is somewhat against the use of artificial 

 manures when hay is grown for sale, it by no means forbids their employment when grass 

 land is used for the production of meat, milk, butter or cheese; and to illustrate this I will 

 merely allude to one manure ingredient, viz. : potash. In the large crop of hay which we 

 take from Plot 11, we carry off annually 140 pounds of potash per acre; 1,000 pounds live 

 weight of an ox or sheep contains about 1^ to If pounds of potash. There are very few 

 acres of land in the state of New York which will fatten one bullock per acre, and even if 

 there were, the potash carried off would not amount to more than one pound. Of milk, 100 

 pounds weight contains a little over % a pound of mineral matter, or about one-thirteenth 

 part of what would be contained in 100 pounds of hay, while butter robs the land of noth 

 ing. 



If land has been impoverished by the sale of hay, and hay is to be sold, dung is the 

 cheapest manure to apply; but if land so impoverished is intended for the future to produce 

 milk, meat, or other animal products, potash is sure to be wanting, and the best manure to 

 apply will be either 200 pounds of sulphate or muriate of potash, or three times that quanti 

 ty of kanit salts, and, in addition to whichever of these substances is selected, 200 pounds of 

 superphosphate of lime and from 60 to 80 pounds of nitrate of soda. 



If, however, the land has been impoverished merely by feeding stock, then the exhaus 

 tion will be more likely due to the absence of nitrogen and phosphate, and fertility must be 

 restored by an application of these substances as manures. 



Quantity rather than quality is the object to be attained when hay is the crop grown ; but 

 when animal products are produced from grass, the quality of the grasa is of very great im 

 portance. Quality of pasture is dependent upon the food in the soil: in land under grass 

 there is a constant struggle going on between the various plants which constitute what we 

 call a pasture. Upon my experimental ground, the pasture contained about fifty different 

 species of plants when the experiments were commenced, and upon the unmanured ground 

 these have been subject to but little change; but it is far otherwise upon the variously man- 



