8 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 



Rye-grass, Sedges, Airas, and Rushes having suffered 

 badly, but Thistles and other Gompositce having held their 

 own wonderfully well. The only Leguminous plant left 

 in ten years is the White Clover. I admit the botanical 

 analysis has been made by myself, and therefore has 

 been done very roughly ; but it is a point which the 

 new Agricultural Research Commission, proposed under 

 the Agricultural Development Schemes of the Govern- 

 ment, might take up with the view of demonstrating 

 why Agrostis, Vernal, Crested Dog's-tail, and even 

 Yorkshire Fog become nourishing eatable grasses when 

 grown alongside excess of White Clover, but remain 

 worthless when growing alone or in their own company. 

 I am afraid you will think that I am inflicting on you a 

 mere every-day agricultural lecture ; but I felt I must 

 address you on what I knew something about, even at the 

 risk of proving tiresome on a subject in which you are 

 not specially interested. If T may venture a little further, 

 I would like to mention some points on pastures under 

 different treatment, those conducted at that most inter- 

 esting Research Station, founded and endowed by the late 

 Sir John Bennett Lawes at Rothamsted, in Hertfordshire, 

 where a piece of old grass land was divided in 1856 

 into half-acre plots, and every year since each plot has 

 been manured in a similar manner. The plots are cut 

 for hay every year, and not only are the weights of 

 hay recorded, but a portion of the herbage is sorted out 

 into the Grasses, Clovers, and other plants of which it 

 is made up. As stated in the various reports, the general 

 results indicate that whatever the particular mixture of 

 plants in a field may be, it represents the combined 

 result of the soil, the manure, and the kind of management 

 adopted, and when any of these items are altered the 

 nature of the herbage is altered also. For example, if 

 a field mainly Cock's-foot is hayed every year, the 

 Cock's-foot diminishes ; again, that excess of nitrogen 

 will tlrive out the Clovers, though in the chemical 



