Our Climate and our Wheat-Crops. 209 
the crops obtained in the two years in question contained the 
following amounts of nitrogen : — 
Nitrogen in Produce per Acre. 
Ammonia-salt«, 
Autumn Sown. 
Ammonia-salts, 
Spring Sown. 
More ( + ) or less ( - ) by 
Spring Sowing. 
Corn. 
Straw. 
Total. 
Corn. 
straw. 
Total. 
Com. 
Straw. 
ToUl. 
1874 
lbs. 
370 
IbB. 
14-5 
lbs. 
51-5 
lbs. 
28-5 
lbs. 
9-1 
lbs. j 
37-6 
lbs. 
- 8-3 
lbs. 
-5-4 
lbs. 
-13-9 
1879 
6-6 
5-7 
12-3 
17-6 
13-8 
31-4 
+ 11-0 
+8-1 
+ 19-1 
1874 I 
+ or - 
1879 ) 
+30-4 
+ 8-8 
+39-2 
+ 10-9 
- 4-7 
1 
+ 6-2 
! 
The point of greatest interest is the contrast between the 
result obtained by autumn sowing in the dry season of 1874, 
and in the wet one of 1879. Whilst we have, in the produce of 
1874, 51 "5 lbs. of nitrogen, corresponding to 63 per cent, of the 
amount supplied, we have, in that of 1879, only 12"3 lbs., 
corresponding to only 15 per cent, of that supplied. In these 
calculations no allowance is made for the amount of nitrogen 
that the respective crops may have derived from the pre- 
viously existing stores within the soil, irrespectively of the 
immediate supply by the ammonia-salts. It is obvious that, 
were any such allowance made, the result would appear even 
worse than is represented by the figures as they stand. It may 
be added, that such approximate estimates as we are able to 
make, founded on the amount of water passing through the 
60-inch drain-gauge, and on the analyses of the drainage-waters 
collected from the autumn-sown plot, from the date of the 
autumn sowing up to harvest, would indicate an amount of loss 
of the supplied nitrogen by drainage sufficient to account, in 
great measure, for the defective yield. 
With regard to the results relating to the spring sowing, it 
need only be noticed how much less of the nitrogen of the 
manure was recovered in the produce after spring sowing than 
after autumn sowing in the dry season of 1874 ; and how little 
more of the nitrogen of the spring-sown ammonia-salts was re- 
covered in the crop in the too dry season of 1874, than in the 
very much too wet one of 1879, with all its loss by drainage. 
The facts adduced can leave no doubt whatever that, inde- 
pendently of other adverse effects arising from low temperatures 
and excess of rain, the Rothamsted experimental wheat-crops 
of 1879 suffered very considerably from loss of the nitrogen of 
VOL. XVI.--S. S. P 
