ENGLISH WAY TO FEED GRASSES 301 



v 



parts and in other parts left unfed. There much reli- 

 ance was placed on basic slag, which seemed to make the 

 grass sweeter and more filled with clovers. James Peter 

 in Gloucestershire, England, showed me pastures parts 

 of which he fed and other parts that needed no feed- 

 ing. His practice is to use 1,000 pounds of bonemeal 

 once in 7 years, and annually a few hundred pounds of 

 basic slag. He also feeds corn and cake to good cattle 

 on grass,, and the results are extraordinary, the thickness 

 and richness of the grass being almost past belief. In 

 England it is a common sight in spring to see manure 

 distributors going over the fields putting on basic slag, 

 mixed sometimes with a small amount of nitrate of soda. 

 It is thought, however, that the slag should for best 

 results be applied in the fall. In Scotland I observed 

 the use of fertilizers on pasture, and the intelligent sys- 

 tem of study by which the land was divided into a series 

 of small pastures, each one given a different fertilization, 

 and each lot stocked with sheep, careful account of which 

 was kept so that one could know just which combina- 

 tion of fertilizers paid best. This work is new to us in 

 America, but it seems assured that we shall soon come 

 to it with the plowing up of pasture land in the West, 

 and the consequent decrease in cattle stocks just at a time 

 when meats 'are higher than ever before within our 

 knowledge. 



Fertilisation an Art of Diversity. It is no simple 

 problem to take a given bit of land and ascertain just 

 what sort of fertilization will best suit it. The problem 

 will require a separate working out for each class of 

 soils. Roughly, we may thus divide our soils and their 



