674 



Improvement of Poor Pasture. 



[FEB., 



such ripened stalks were conspicuously wanting. It became 

 apparent, therefore, that one notable result of applying phos- 

 phates to this poor pasture was to give the grasses growing on 

 it the power of ripening their seeds. On the unmanured plot 

 the plants appeared to be unable to produce seed, and they 

 continued throughout the whole season making abortive 

 attempts to do so, and in their efforts produced continuous sup- 

 plies of fresh green forage for stock. But on the manured plots, 

 with the help of the phosphates, the plants succeeded early in 

 the season in producing an abundance of ripened stems and 

 seed. The stems, being less palatable to the sheep than the 

 leafy foliage, were left untouched till the ripening was com- 

 pleted, and as the season went on they became so much harder 

 and less palatable that the stock would not eat them at all. 

 But this ripening of the seed had also a very damaging effect 

 on the production of further eatable forage. The plants, having 

 succeeded in their great natural function of producing seed, 

 rested exhausted, and ceased to send forth such an abundance 

 as before of new shoots and leaves. Consequently, after the 

 seeding period, the manured plots became actually less valuable 

 for grazing purposes than the unmanured. 



In the records of other similar experiments no reference has 

 been made to this effect produced by the manures, but that it 

 must have occurred on all of them to a greater or less degree 

 seems probable — at any rate ; on all those pastures on which the 

 phosphatic manures exercised a maiked effect. The influence 

 that phosphates have in promoting the formation of seed, and 

 thus quickening and hastening the harvest, is constantly seen in 

 the cereal as well as in other crops, and the absence of phos- 

 phate shows itself in later maturity and in a less production of 

 seed. In the case of pastures like that at Downan, from which 

 the phosphates have been regularly removed for a long series of 

 years in the bodies of the live stock grazing on them, .the 

 deficiency in phosphates appears to have reached the stage at 

 which the formation of seeds by the grasses occupying the pas- 

 ture is rendered impossible, and, while that indicates both a low 

 yield and a poor nutritive quality in the pasture, some compen- 

 sation is provided in the constant and unceasing growth of the 

 grasses throughout the whole season, and in the prevention of 



