1904.] 



Basic Slag for Poor Pastures. 



4i5 



of a fairly even mixture of clay and sand, and it is only when 

 dealing with soils of essentially light character, i.e., containing 

 far more sand than clay, that the use of basic slag alone has 

 failed to produce the desired effect. In the case of such soils it 

 lias been found advisable to employ potash, in the form of 

 kainit, in conjunction with the basic slag. 



Notwithstanding the fact that the effects of basic slag are 

 dependent in a measure upon differences in the soil — even 

 where, as in the case of the clays, the soils belong to the same 

 class—the one broad fact elicited by its use is that it tends to 

 encourage whatever leguminous herbage may be normally 

 present in the pasture. The significance of this statement, 

 however, can only be fully appreciated when the normal herbage 

 of one of these poor pastures is compared with that of the plot 

 subjected to the influence of basic slag. The marked stimula- 

 tion of the clovers must, and in fact does, imply the displace- 

 ment to a very great extent of the noxious, or at best useless, 

 weeds which, as a general rule, occupy such land ; hence it will 

 be seen that the entire herbage undergoes a transformation, and, 

 acre for acre, yields sevenfold the quantity of nutriment. And 

 it should be noted that this beneficial result has accrued in 

 numerous instances where the normal proportion of clovers was 

 so small as to be scarcely appreciable. 



It has likewise been demonstrated, as a result of these experi- 

 ments, that the improvement effected by the basic slag has 

 extended to the whole of the herbage — the evidence as to this 

 being derived from the fact that stock will graze to an even 

 extent the entire herbage of a pasture thus treated, instead of 

 confining their attention to the clovers. This power of rendering 

 the collective growth of a pasture more palatable to stock must 

 therefore be reckoned as a further point in favour of the use of 

 basic slag in those cases where, from poverty of soil conditions 

 or any other cause, the herbage in its normal state is commonly 

 rejected. 



. The tests to which basic slag has been subjected in the course 

 of these experiments have been as thorough and conclusive as 

 it was possible to make them. Typical pastures have been 

 selected in some of the poorest districts situated respectively on 

 the Weald clay of Sussex, the heavy, cold clays of West Dorset, 



