No. 4.] MANAGEMENT OF MOWINGS. 375 



shows a rather deep bluish-green color. Its growth is short, 

 and it seems peculiarly liable to rust. Adjoining land of 

 similar character, which six years ago was in the same con- 

 dition as this half-acre, and which has been top-dressed with 

 potash salts and slag meal in combination with nitrate, pro- 

 duces far heavier and more satisfactory crops. Nitrate alone, 

 therefore, should be used for the grass crop only under 

 exceptional conditions, and then not for many consecutive 

 years. Two years will in most cases probaljly be the limit. 



TJie Possibilities of the Hay Crop untJiout Manures or 

 Fertilizers supply ing Nitrogen. — The fact that good crops 

 of clover can be produced on land which for many successive 

 years has received applications of materials furnishing of 

 the different important plant food elements only phosphoric 

 acid, potash and lime, was pointed out in the first paper upon 

 this subject. In that paper the ability of clover to thrive on 

 soils thus treated, due to the fact that it can take the needed 

 nitrogen from the air, was especially eiuphasized. Attention 

 is now called to the fact that good crops of mixed hay 

 (clovers and grasses) can be produced under this system of 

 manuring. A striking evidence of this fact is afforded by a 

 number of plots on the grounds of the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural College. It can readily be understood how good 

 crops of clovers are possible under this system. It will not 

 be equally clear, perhaps, to all how grasses which are known 

 to take all the nitrogen which they require from the soil can 

 thrive on soils to which for a long series of years neither 

 manure nor fertilizer furnishing nitrogen has been applied. 

 That the grasses can do this, however, has been shown both 

 at Amherst and by the work of numerous experimenters in 

 other parts of the United States and in Europe. 



The limed portion of one })lot upon the Experiment Sta- 

 tion grounds last season, which had been annually manured 

 with dissolved bone-black and muriate of potash for fifteen 

 years, and the greater part of the time at the rates respec- 

 tively, bone-black 320 pounds and muriate of potash IGO 

 pounds per acre, gave the following yields : hay, first cut, at 

 the rate of 3,600 pounds })er acre ; rowen, second cut, at 

 the rate of 2,575 pounds per acre. 



Here was a total crop — and on soil, by the way, which is 



