CHAP. IV. 



THE ROTHAMSTED EXPERIMENTS. 



813 



meadow herbage are capable of varying in relative quantity, the 

 Rothauisted experiments afford some valuable information. Out of 

 as many as eighty-seven botanical analyses, made in four different 

 years, of the hay from a score of differently manured plots of meadow 

 land in Rothainsted Park, the maximum and minimum results are 

 here set forth : 



Thus, whilst the grasses in one case rose to as much as 99 '26 per 

 cent, of the total weight of hay (in the year 1872, on a plot receiving 

 mixed mineral manures sulphates of potash, soda, and magnesia, and 

 superphosphate of lime with silicates, every year), they exhibited 

 every gradation down to as small a quantity as 48'82 per cent, of the 

 total hay (in 1872, on a plot receiving mixed mineral manures, without 

 silicates, each year). In the former case the hay may be said to have 

 been all grass ; in the latter case only half grass. The leguminous 

 herbage once registered as high as 39'77 per cent, of the total hay (in 

 the same year and on the same plot, just referred to, as gave only 

 48'82 per cent, of grass) ; in some cases it had dwindled down to 

 nothing (in each of the four years, 1862-6772-77, on the plot receiving 

 mixed mineral manures and silicates, and, in 1887, on the plot receiving 

 mixed mineral manures and ammonia salts). Lastly, the miscellaneous 

 herbage, though it has reached as much as 39*53 per cent, of the total 

 hay (in 1867, on a plot receiving yearly the mineral constituents and 

 the nitrogen equal to the quantity of these ingredients contained in 

 one ton of hay), has fallen as low as 0*74 per cent, (on the same plot as 

 gave the maximum of 99'26 per cent, of grasses). These great fluctuations 

 upon ordinary meadow land, subjected to many different kinds of con- 

 tinuous manuring, serve to bring into greater prominence the uniformity 

 in the percentages of the proximate constituents of the hay of water 

 meadows as detailed (p. 885) in the subsequent chapter on Irrigation. 

 It may be added that very wide fluctuations are noticeable even upon 

 one and the same plot of meadow land, receiving continuously the 

 same manure, at Rothamsted. Such variations must be attributed to 

 seasonal influence, whereas one of the most noteworthy features in the 

 economy of water meadows is that they are rendered largely inde- 

 pendent of, and therefore in only a lessened degree susceptible to, 

 variations in seasonal characters. 



Some additional observations may appropriately be made on the 

 world-renowned experiments, conducted at Rothamsted Park, Hert- 

 fordshire, upon meadow land. Meadow herbage, it will readily be 

 acknowledged, offers to the agricultural investigator about as complex 

 a subject for study as can well be imagined. Some 7 acres of the land 



