154 Report of Experiments on the Growili of Barley, 
The seed was sown on March 4 ; the more forward plots, which 
this season were only those manured with nitrate of soda and 
phosphates, and those with rape-cake, were cut on August 11 
and 12, and carted on August 16 ; the remainder, indeed the 
majority, Avere cut on August 14 and 15, and carted on August 21. 
With nearly the whole of the active growing period cold and 
very wet, the crops of this, the twentieth season in succession of 
the growth of barley on the same land, were, under nearly all 
conditions of high manuring, more bulky than usual, but many 
of them were much laid. The excess of straw, compared with 
the average, was especially great with farmyard-manure. The 
proportion of corn to straw was in all cases below the average. 
But, with much improved weather at the ripening and harvest 
time, the actual quantity of corn per acre was, under most con- 
ditions of high manuring, and especially with farmyard-manure, 
above the average ; and the weight per bushel of dressed corn 
was, under all conditions without exception, above the average. 
When speaking of the results obtained in the barley-field in 
,tlie two years of summer drought, 1868 and 1870, particular 
attention was called to the fact that the plots manured with farm- 
yard-manure, or with nitrate of soda, withstood the drought much 
better than those manured with ammonia-salts. After the wet 
and cold spring and summer of 1871, the farmyard-manure still 
gave very high total produce — indeed as high as in any year of the 
twenty excepting 1864 ; as heavy a weight of straw as in any 
year excepting 1864 and 1854 ; and as much corn as in any year 
excepting 1864 and 1863. But the nitrate-of-soda plots, though 
giving more corn, and considerably more straw, than in either of 
the years of drought, did not in this wet and cold season show 
the same superiority over the plots manured with ammonia-salts 
that they did in either 1868 or 1870. The nitrated plot — the 
results of which are quoted in the Tables (4 A A) — being one of 
the ripest in the field, suffered, it is true, considerably by the 
depredations of birds ; but, independently of this, there is evidence 
enough that the nitrate did not show the same superiority over 
the ammonia-salts in the cold and wet as in the hot and dry 
season. Something may be due to the greater exhaustion of the 
nitrated plots in the preceding years of drought ; but something 
is, doubtless, also due to more loss by drainage of the nitrogen of 
the spring-sown nitrate, than of that of the also spring-sown 
ammonia-salts, during the wet summer of 1871. 
In connection with the fact, and the explanation, of the com- 
paratively defective result with the nitrate in a wet summer when 
applied to barley, the very opposite result with wheat is of con- 
siderable interest. Thus, as already mentioned, there was, in the 
experimental wheat-field, much less deficiency of corn, and even 
