158 Experiences up to the end of October, 1904. 



to the absence of this humus, as I have frequently pointed out, 

 that we must almost entirely ascribe the ruinous decline of fertility 

 in British soils. The ryegrass question seems subsequently to have 

 gone to sleep till 1882, when my late friend, Mr C. Faunce de 

 Laune of Sharsted Court took up the subject in a valuable and 

 widely-known paper, which was published in the Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England (Part I., No. 35) in 1882. This 

 article, as is well known, not only aroused attention to the subject of 

 ryegrass, but called attention to tlie enormous adulterations in the 

 grass seed trade, and thus paved the way for much of what has 

 since followed, and, as Mr Hunter points out (vide p. 79), if Mr F. de 

 Laune had not gone back to the teaching of Sinclair to find out 

 the truth, we should probably have been pretty much where we were 

 twenty years ago. But the evils arising from the excessive use of rye- 

 grass have since been found to be far more extensive than was originally 

 supposed, and if the reader will turn to the paper I delivered at Cam- 

 bridge this year (vide Appendix VII. ) he will see that the greatest evil 

 lies in the effect it has of diminishing the clover, with which it is usually 

 associated— effects which have been fully proved, as I have shown 

 elsewhere, and which have been proved again by the experiments of 

 the Fifeshire Agricultural Association, which show that the amount 

 of clover rises or falls as ryegrass is diminished or increased. But 

 perhaps one of the best evidences of the small amount of red clover 

 produced when it is associated with ryegrass has been met with 

 on this property, one of the tenants on which makes annually large 

 purchases of ryegrass and clover hay from various farms in the 

 neighbourhood, and for many miles around. I have constantly 

 observed and inquired into these purchases, with the view of noting 

 the proportion of clover that appears with the ryegrass. An 

 occasional cartload may show a fair amount of clover, but if the 

 fields in Scotland generally (and I have no reason to suppose that 

 things materially differ here from the rest of the country) show as 

 little clover, then there can hardly be said to be any scientific 

 rotation crops in Scotland at all — in other words, the alternation 

 of crops which derive nitrogen from the air with those which must 

 derive it from the soil. All the clover losses may not be attributable 

 to the ryegrass, but that a very large proportion of these are has 

 been amply proved by the experiments made on the subject. I 

 know of nothing more striking in the whole history of the neglect 

 of agriculture by the British Government than the fact that it is 

 solely from the want of Government experimental farms that such 

 a vast injury should have occurred to our soil, for, had they existed, 

 farmers would have been duly warned of the evils arising from the 

 excessive use of ryegrass, and the immense losses that have ensued 

 from failing to acquire atmospheric nitrogen, and the humus to be 

 derived from clover roots, would have been largely averted. In this 

 connection it may be added that, had my system of farming been 

 pursued, a large proportion of the sums paid to the foreigner for 

 nitrates would been saved. 



