THE ESSEX EXPERIMENTS 



39 



phosphate) by a bottom of wild white clover comparable to that 

 on the other plots. During 1919 and 1920, and to a certain extent 

 during 1918, it was noticeable that the open hearth fluorspar slag 

 on Plot 4 was not doing quite so well as some of the other slags, and 

 the weights of hay for these years confirm this opinion. The inferiority 

 of both the Gafsa phosphate and the open hearth fluorspar slag plots 

 during the dry season of 1919 was also obvious to the eye. 



The behaviour of the clover was the outstanding difference between 

 this centre and Horndon. Whereas at Horndon the clover runners 

 ramified over the whole of the plots receiving basic phosphates and 

 persisted throughout the whole winter, at Latchingdon the clover 

 seldom made its appearance before the end of May or the beginning 

 of June, and seemed to vanish completely from the plots by the end 



TABLE XVII. PERCENTAGE OF THE GROUND SPACE OCCUPIED BY 

 THE VEGETATION ON THE PLOTS AT BUTTERFIELDS, LATCHINGDON 



of October. During the dry season of 1919 the clover bottom on 

 the treated plots, although vastly superior to the unmanured plot, 

 was much inferior to what it had been during previous years, or 

 during the following year 1920. Not till the rain came at the end of 

 June in 1919 did the clover make any real show, and had the plots 

 been cut early in July as was intended there would have been little, 

 if any, clover in the hay. 



The examination of the flora covering the ground space of Plots 1, 

 3 and 4 was made during the third week of September 1919, and the 

 results are given in Table XVII. 



As far as the composition of the herbage is concerned, the open 

 hearth (fluorspar) basic slag compares very favourably with the basic 

 Bessemer slag, and both are greatly superior to the untreated plot. 



Butcher's Farm, Lambourne End. These trials were not com- 

 menced until 1919, the manures being sown on January 4th, 1919. 

 The writer had been offered a supply of a new 'ferruginous 

 phosphate' recently discovered in Cleveland (N.R. of Yorkshire), 



