of Manures Applied to Pasture. 



35 



The Effects of Re-dressing Slagged Land. 



When experiments were started at Cockle Park in 1897 

 many, perhaps most, farmers held the opinion that while 

 Basic Slag might produce a striking result when grass-land 

 was for the first time treated with this manure, the results 

 of a fresh application some years later would be comparatively 

 inconspicuous. No doubt they had the analogy of lime in 

 their minds when they gave expression to this opinion, but 

 the action of lime is very different from the action of Basic 

 Slag, The former attacks accumulations of inert humus, and 

 rapidly converts them into plant-food, and it is evident that 

 if these accumulations are used up there can be no opportunity 

 for a fresh dressing of lime to produce any such effect as a 

 first dressing. Slag, on the other hand, so far as we are 

 aware, acts directly as a plant-food, so that when one dose 

 is exhausted there would appear to be no reason why a second 

 dose should not act very much like the first. Some light is 

 thrown on the subject by these experiments. At Cockle Park, 

 Sevington, and Cransley Plot 4 got 5 cwt. of Basic Slag for 

 the first year, and the other 5 cwt . for the fourth. On 

 Table XIV., where the returns of Plots 3 and 4 are shown for 

 nine years (eight at Cransley), it will be seen that in the first, 

 second and third years 10 cwt. of Basic Slag (Plot 3) invariably 

 produced much more live-weight increase than 5 cwt. of 

 Basic Slag (Plot 4). If we may assume, as seems reasonable, 

 that the relative produce of the two plots at each station would 

 have been approximately the same in the fourth, fifth and 

 sixth years, as in the third year, had no further manure 

 been applied; and, further, assuming that the aggregate live- 

 weight gain on Plot4 for the three years following the repeated 

 dose of Basic Slag would have borne the same relationship 

 to the produce during these years of Plot 3, as the total for the 

 first three years of Plot 3 bears to the total of Plot 4 for these 

 years, we get the figures in Table XV. Now, the difference 

 between the actual live-weight gains and the gains that it is 

 estimated would have been made had no second dose of Basic 

 Slag been given, is the figure that we may legitimately 

 ascribe to the action of the second 5 cwt. of slag, and these 

 figures we may compare with the gains made by the original 



