on Permanent Meadow Land. 
229 
attention was confined in the former section of our Report almost 
exclusively to the nature of the manures employed, and to the 
amounts of the gross produce or increase of hay obtained by their 
use. A few passing remarks only were made upon the variable 
character of the herbage, according to the description of manure 
employed. But there are other aspects of the subject than those 
hitherto considered, which are well worthy the attention of the 
intelligent farmer. 
The permanent meadow land of a farm stands in a somewhat 
isolated position in regard to the crops under tillage. In the case 
of the rotation croj)s, the straw of the corn ones, the larger portion 
of the most important manurial constituents of the green crops, 
frequently the manure from the consumption of the hay of the 
meadow land itself, and perhaps that from imported cattle-food 
also, will, at least once in the course, find their way to the arable 
land. But the meadow land does not generally come in for a due 
share of restoration of constituents by the home manures. Hence 
it happens, that the amount of constituents actually carried from 
the land, year by year, in the hay crop, has generally a more direct 
influence on exhaustion, than that harvested in the rotation 
produce. 
It is important to consider then — what amounts of the several 
constituents are taken from an acre of land in an oi'dinary crop of 
hav ? — what is the drain of them, which the stores of the soil, or 
the supplies of other manures, are called upon to meet, when the 
produce is increased by means of active portable manures ? — and 
further, what is the proportion of the active manurial constituent 
nitrogen supplied in such manures, that is recovered in the 
increase of crop obtained by its use ? 
It is also essential to a right appreciation of the action of dif- 
ferent manures upon the grass-crop, carefully to ascertain their 
influence upon the development of the different plants of which 
the mixed herbage is made up, and at the same time to take into 
consideration the recognised comparative qualities of the different 
plants so developed. 
Lastly, with a great variation in the proportion of the different 
plants developed, and in the degree of their maturity at any given 
time, according to season and the manure employed, it is obvious, 
that there must be corresjionding variation in the per-centage 
-composition of the complex produce — hay. The influence of the 
■different manures upon the chemical composition of the hay con- 
stitutes, therefore, another important point of inquiry. 
It would perhaps, in some points of view, be more in order to 
give the results of the analyses, and with them to consider the 
per-centage composition of the hay, before treating of the acreage 
y\e\d of the several constituents, calculated by means of tlio§e 
