INFLUENCE ON THE PRODUCTION 

 OF MUTTON OF MANURES APPLIED 

 TO PASTURE. 



William Somerville, M.A., D.Sc. 



Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy, University of Oxford. 



It is doubtless within the knowledge of most farmers, and 

 of others who take an interest in agriculture, that during- 

 recent years a considerable amount of experimental work 

 has been in progress throughout Great Britain, the object 

 of which has been to ascertain the results of the manuring 

 of pastures, such results being obtained not in terms of 

 herbage, but of live-weight increase. Up to the year 1897 

 no experimental work on these lines had ever been under- 

 taken at home or abroad. The experimental station at 

 Rothamsted, the leading agricultural societies, and certain 

 agricultural colleges and private individuals had, of course,, 

 carried out numerous tests with manures on grass-land, but 

 these tests were, for the most part, conducted on meadows 

 or, if on pasture, then stock was excluded for the time 

 being, the herbage was allowed to grow unchecked till 

 mature, when it was weighed, and the experiment, though 

 nominally on a pasture, was really on a hay-field. In the 

 first season of such an experiment, on land hitherto used for 

 grazing, the character of the herbage will not be much 

 affected by the exclusion of stock — and especially so if it 

 is cut before it is quite mature — but in the course of a 

 few years the relative abundance of the various species of 

 plants will alter considerably, and the results obtained will 

 be less and less applicable to pastures. The finer grasses, 

 clovers, and other dwarf plants, that secure sufficient light and 

 air in a close-cropped pasture, are rapidly crowded out, or 



