206 



THE SYSTEM OF FARM-YAED MANURIXG. 



soil permits, much deeper than the potato ; it possesses, 

 so to speak, a higher power of vegetation than the rye 

 plant, and in the faculty of appropriating nutriment re- 

 sembles weeds. 



1853. Oats. 



Cunuersdorf, Mausegast, Kotitz, Oberbobritzseh, Oberscliona. 



The point Avhicli most strikes us in this table is the 

 great inequality in the produce of two cereal plants 

 grown successively on the same unmanured soil. 



The field at Cunnersdorf, which next to that at Ober- 

 scliona had given the lowest crop of rye-corn and straw, 

 yielded in the thu'd year the largest produce of oat-corn 

 and straw. 



The difference in the condition and closeness of the 

 nutritive substances in the lower layers of these fields is 

 undeniable. The field at Cunnersdorf was poorer in the 

 upper layers, but went on increasing downwards in the 

 amount of substances nutritive to the corn plant ; the 

 other fields decreased downwards. 



The returns of the field at Mausegast for the year 1853 

 refer to barley and not to oats : hence they afford no 

 conclusion as to the condition of the deeper layers, from 

 which the oat plant derives its food : but they show the 

 state into which the arable surface soil had been brought 

 by the preceding corn crop. Owing to the abstraction 

 of phosphoric acid, and perhaps of nitrogen, the yield 

 of barley-corn was much less than might have been 

 expected from the soil, judging by the preceding rye 

 crop ; and a small supply of superphosphate or guano 



