29 



Manuring Grass Lands. 



Next in importance to a fair degree of special adaptation of the 

 soil for a remunerative production of grasses come the require- 

 ments of an efficient supply of available plant food. Grasses are, 

 comparatively speaking, large consumers of plant food. A few 

 numerical statements regarding the grass crop may show in what 

 direction and in what varying quantities the same weight of the 

 crop may consume the different articles of plant food when raised 

 under more or less favorable conditions. 



Green grass, at the time of forming seeds (per ton), contains 

 seventy-five per cent moisture and twenty-five per cent vegetable 

 matter : — 



Meadow hay (per ton), containing from fourteen to fifteen per 

 cent of moisture : — 



Moisture, 



Vegetable matter, 



Mineral constituents (in vegetable matter). 



Nitrogen, 



Phosphoric acid, 



Potassium oxide. 



Calcium oxide, 



Magnesium oxide, . 



Sodium oxide. 



Sulphuric acid, 



Chlorine, 



Manurial value, 



. 280.00 to 300.00 pounds. 

 1,700.00 to 1,720.00 " 

 100.00 to 160.00 



50.00 " 



30.00 to 

 7.00 to 



32.00 to 

 6.00 to 

 3.00 to 

 2.60 to 

 5.50 to 

 7.. 50 to 



14.00 

 64.00 

 20.00 " 

 10.00 " 



6.00 



9.00 " 

 16.00 " 

 $5.36 to $10.50 



Experience tells us that a liberal manuring pays better than a 

 scant one ; yet, if we should try to restore to the soil from outside 

 sources a corresponding amount of all the fertilizing constituents 

 which the grass crop abstracts, it would make, in most instances, 



