68 THE ROTHAMSTED EXPERIMENTS. 



SECTION II.— EXPERIMENTS WITH BARLEY GROWN 

 CONTINUOUSLY; IIOOSEIELD, ROTHAMSTED. 



Introduction. 



We have now to consider results obtained at Kothamsted 

 on the growth of barley, for more than forty years in suc- 

 cession on the same land. The results of some laboratory 

 investigations in connection with barley will also be adduced. 

 Barley, like wheat, is, as is well known, a member of the 

 great Gramineous Order of plants, to which we owe so many 

 and such important economic products. In our own country 

 and climate, barley comes second to wheat in importance 

 among the cereal crops we cultivate ; though, in the north, 

 oats gain in relative consideration. 

 Various Over large areas of America, with warmer and longer 



gramineous summers> another gramineous grain-crop, maize, comes into 

 prominence ; and in warmer localities still, grows the sugar- 

 cane. Indeed it is to this family that we owe our chief 

 starch- and sugar-yielding crops ; and it is somewhat remark- 

 able that the plants which, at any rate in temperate climates, 

 come next in importance as starch- and sugar-yielding crops, 

 should belong to such widely different Orders as the Solanere 

 giving us the potato, the Cruciferse turnips, and the Cheno- 

 podiacese the sugar-beet, mangel-wurzel, &c. ; whilst the 

 organs, or parts of the plants which yield the products, are 

 also very different. In each case, however, it is the store of 

 reserve-material which the plant has accumulated for repro- 

 duction, or for further growth, which we turn to economic 

 account. 



But not only does the gramineous family provide us with 

 very important starch- and sugar-yielding crops, but it con- 

 tributes a large proportion of the natural and cultivated her- 

 bage, upon which animals of use to man are fed over large 

 portions of the globe. 

 Wheat and Although wheat and barley are thus closely allied botan- 

 pared. C ° m ~ ^ C9 ^J> an( ^ tnev have, moreover, in some respects very similar 

 requirements as cultivated crops, yet it will be found that 

 there are distinctions as well as similarities, which it is im- 

 portant to recognise. 



In our own country and climate, at any rate, wheat is 

 almost invariably sown in the autumn, whilst barley is as 

 generally not sown until the spring. Thus wheat has four or 

 live months for root-development, and for gaining possession 

 of range of soil, before barley is sown. Under these circum- 

 stances, too, the conditions of soil most suitable to the two 



