122 Experiments with Sheep 



severe test.* The soil of the field is what is known as 

 very light land. 



I now turn to the sheep experiment at Cockle Park, 

 as regards which the same misleading form of experi- 

 ment has been repeated. The diagram illustrating the 

 effect of the transforming hand of the chemist is really 

 rather amusing. We start, as the advertisements of 

 nourishing foods for the human animal do, at an ex- 

 tremely low standard, and the diagram shows first the 

 figure of a small, melancholy, attenuated sheep, and no 

 wonder, as he has been kept in the no-manure plot — 

 poor worn-out land, growing no less than about 84 per 

 cent, of wiry bent. But this attenuated sample of what 

 may be done by a dietary of this description has its use 

 in magnifying immensely, by contrast, the sheep in the 

 remaining eight compartments which have been stimu- 

 lated by the use of artificial manures, at costs varying 

 from 228. to as high as 61s. an acre. The portly figures of 

 these sheep, as shown in the diagram, with the various 

 manures inscribed on their sides, are really most en- 

 couraging at first sight, and show the results that may 

 be attained by practically starving one sheep by keeping 

 it on the toughest and poorest fare, and feeding others 

 highly through the agency of costly manures applied 

 to the soil. But how would it have been had the 

 experiment been made on the Inner Kaimrig, which has 

 carried a large sheep stock fed on a field full of dark 

 green clover and kidney vetch, and which still, on 

 November 12, presents a rich dark green appearance ? 

 I have no hesitation in saying that the attenuated sheep 

 in Plot No. 1 of the Cockle Park experiments would have 

 assumed a form as portly as his brethren on the manured 

 plots, and yet on the Inner Kaimrig — originally the 

 poorest field on a poor to medium land farm — ^no 



* No difference could be perceived in the grass taken after potatoes, 

 and the fifth crop (oats) was a satisfactory one, so that the lasting effects 

 from land manured with turf has been proved beyond doubt. 



