Mixture for Rocky Surfaces. 173 



of manure in an open soil is of more practical value than a much 

 larger quantity of manure in a soil of inferior physical condition. 

 There are three losses entailed by inferior physical conditions of 

 soil — (1) That the plant is less able to contend with adverse 

 seasons ; (2) that the expense of manurial application must be 

 greater ; and that (3) much of the manure that is applied in 

 excess of the requirements of the plants will be lost by waste or 

 downward percolation, while much of it is liable to enter into 

 insoluble compounds in the soil. 



MixTUBE OF Drought-resisting Plants for Bare Rocky 

 Surfaces. — ^Arthur Young, in his "Elements and Practice of 

 Agriculture," has recommended for chalk soil a mixture of 

 yarrow, bumet, trefoil, white clover, and chicory, so that the 

 pasture woidd be formed of plants not one of which is a grass 

 plant. On full consideration, I think it probable that Arthur 

 Young is quite right in limiting his selection for thin lands to 

 plants that he was sure would flourish on them, and as there are 

 often, on hill lands especially, gravelly slopes of thin soil, on 

 which grasses at once dry up in a drought, I have corresponded 

 with Mr. James Hunter as to the proportions for a mixture com- 

 posed entirely of drought-resisting plants other than grass, and 

 he has sent me the following mixture, to which, however, he has 

 added one grass. The mixture is as follows : — 



Such a mixture might be sown on the steep, gravelly banks of a 

 field, and the remainder of the land sown with whatever mixture 

 was most suitable. Two acres of the Shereburgh field, where 

 the soil is shaUowly distributed over a rocky surface, were sovsti 

 in 1900 with this mixture, and in 1904 the results shown 

 were most satisfactory, and a fair amount of grazing has been 

 attained, where almost nothing could have been expected from an 

 ordinary grass mixture. This year (1907) shows a continued 

 satisfactory result, so much so that I can confidently recommend 

 that a trial should be made of this mixture for poor, shallow, 

 heads of fields, on which a good mixture would be thrown away. 



