1922.] Notes on Manures for November. 755 



Now it is quite obvious that the heaviest dressing (16 cwt. 

 artificials per acre in addition to 12 tons farmyard manure) has 

 not paid : nor has 14 cwt. paid as well as 12 cwt. ; but it would 

 be quite wrong to argue that therefore a farmer should not use 

 artificials at all. As a matter of fact the highest profit is obtained 

 not by the lowest dressing but by the 10 cwt. of artificials in 

 addition to the dung. A similar resiflt is obtained if the potatoes 

 are written at half the cost. The true conclusion is that if it 

 pays to grow a crop at all it pays to grow a good one, and a 

 farmer should endeavour to find out what is the most advan- 

 tageous quantity of fertiliser to use : he will not want to give 

 too much, but he may lose if he gives too little. No one can say 

 beforehand exactly what this quantity is, and nothing but 

 experiment will show it ; but an expert with local knowledge can 

 give useful help. 



Grass Land. — In time of financial trouble farmers look to 

 grass to tide them over their difficulties and undoubtedly this is 

 a safe plan. If, however, grass is to give all the help it can it 

 must be properly treated. Fortunately this is not necessarily a 

 costly matter, and poor grass can commonly be improved at a 

 relatively small expenditure. Grazing land requires first and 

 foremost good stocking. Professor Gilchrist has obtained striking 

 results from mixed grazing at Cockle Park, the gain in live weight 

 of the animals per acre being about doubled when sheep and 

 cattle were used instead of sheep alone. He states " sheep graze 

 only the fine bottom herbage and reject that of a stemmy charac- 

 ter, whereas cattle graze much more evenly and not so closely. 

 When a pasture is grazed with horses large areas soon become 

 coarse and benty where their droppings are deposited and very 

 bare on the parts where they graze. It is of the greatest import- 

 ance that a pasture should be grazed closely at least once a year." 



Assuming good grazing, considerable further improvement may 

 be obtained by the use of basic slag or mineral phosphates. So 

 much has been written about basic slag that it might seem 

 superfluous to say more were it not /for the fact that one can 

 still find grass land that obviously needs it. Experiments have 

 not shown that one kind of slag is invariably better than another, 

 but there are a number of cases where high soluble slag has acted 

 better than one of low solubility. Numerous experiments are 

 being made in the various counties and the results should before 

 long be available. Farmers are, however, becoming increasingly 

 interested in mineral phosphates owing to their relative cheap- 



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