128 Report on the Field and Feeding Experiments at Wohurn. 
Rotation No. 3 — continued. 
Plots 
of One 
Acre. 
Produce per Acke. 
Roots. 
Leaves. 
4 
■With dung, made from 1350 lbs. straw' 
as littei-; 5000 lbs. mangolds; 1250 
lbs. wheat-straw chaff ; and artificial 
manm 6j containing as much nitro- 
1 gen, and other constituents, as thel 
1 manure from 1000 lbs. maize-meal ;( 
namely, 80 lbs. nitrate of soda, 16J 
lbs. bune-ash (made into superphos- 
phate), 7 lbs. sulphate of potash, and 
, 11 lbs. sulphate of magnesia .. 
tons. cwt. qrs. lbs. 
20 18 1 13 
tons. cwt. qrs. lbs> 
3 G 2 20 
1880 was a remarkably good year for growing roots. It 
was indeed as exceptionally favourable to root-crops, as it was 
bad — at least at VVoburn — for wheat. Nothing can show more 
plainly the influence of the season upon our cultivated crops 
than the Woburn experiments on mangolds in 1879 and in 
1880. 
In both years the roots were grown in the same field ; in 
both seasons the land was kept scrupulously clean, and in fine 
condition for the reception of the seed ; it was treated exactly 
alike ; precisely the same manures and in the same quantities 
were used in 1879 as in 1880; the mangold seed was good, 
and there was an even plant throughout the field in both 
years: and yet the mangolds in 1879 turned out a miserable 
failure, and in 1880 a splendid crop. Thus in 1879 the 
cotton-cake dung on plot 1 produced only 4^ tons of mangolds, 
in round numbers, and in 1880 not less than 19J tons ; and 
whilst the heaviest crop on plot 3 amounted to not quite 8 
tons, the same plot in 1880 yielded 24^ tons of topped and 
tailed mangolds. 
The only explanation which occurs to me to suggest of these 
remarkable diflerences is that in 1879 May and June were very 
cold months, whilst in 1880 they were warm and more genial 
to root-crops. In 1879 I noticed that the young mangold plants 
for a month or 6 weeks appeared to stick fast in the soil, making 
hardly any progress, whilst in 1880 they made a fair start at 
once and grew away lustily without an apparent check, much 
encouraged in their growth by the almost continuous showers of 
rain which fell in the months of June and July, followed by a 
month of comparatively dry weather. For the sake of com- 
parison I add the ibllowing Table : — 
