FINAL  REPORT  BY  THE  CONSULTING 
BOTANIST  AND  THE  CONSULTING  CHEMIST 
ON  THE  GRASS  EXPERIMENTS  CONDUCTED 
BY  THE  SOCIETY,  .1895—1904. 
The  series  of  experiments  on  grass  land,  commenced  by  the 
Society  in  1<S95,  have  been  successively  reported  upon  in  1897 
and  1900.'  They  were  again  visited  by  the  Consulting  Botanist 
and  the  Consulting  Chemist  in  1901,  and  are  now  the  subject 
of  this  hnal  Report. 
The  primary  object  was  to  ascertain  how  old  pasture  land 
of  inferior  quality  might  be  improved  by  manurial  applications, 
or  possibly,  l)y  renovation.  In  a few  cases  the  experiments  took 
also  the  form  of  laying  down  land  afresh  with  approved  grass 
mixtures.  It  was  decided  that  the  test  of  improvement  should 
be  not  the  often  misleading  one  of  the  weight  of  hay  which  the 
land  would  j)roduce  in  any  given  year  or  years,  but  the  general 
character  of  the  pasture  at  the  close  of  a series  of  years  during 
which  it  would  be  kept  under  observation  and  its  condition  be 
periodically  reported  upon. 
Different  sites  were  selected,  after  inspection  by  the  Society’s 
scientific  officers,  from  lamls  kindly  offered  for  the  purpose  by 
Members  of  the  Society.  Ultimately,  twenty-two  sites  were 
chosen,  these  being  situated  in  eleven  different  counties  of 
England,  and  ranging  from  Durham  in  the  north  to  Basing- 
stoke (Hants)  in  the  south,  and  from  Ely  in  the  eastern  counties 
to  Hereford  in  the  west.  A complete  list  is  given  on  page  817. 
In  this  selection  nine  different  geological  formations  were 
comprised.  In  all  cases  the  plots  were  marked  out,  but  not 
fenced  off,  in  the  selected  field,  and  the  treatment  to  which 
they  were  subjected,  a})art  from  the  manurial  applications,  was 
just  the  same  as  that  which  the  rest  of  the  field  had,  so  that 
the  experiment  was  carried  out  under  the  ordinary  conditions 
of  farming.  Out  of  the  twenty-two  sites  originally  taken  up, 
one  only  (Tabley,  Cheshire)  has  been  dropped. 
At  the  outset,  samples  of  the  soil  were  analysed  by  the 
Consulting  Chemist,  the  suggestions  for  manurial  tfeatment 
being  largely  based  upon  the  results  of  the  analyses. 
It  is  now  our  duty  to  sum  up  the  results  of  the  work  and 
to  deduce  therefrom  such  general  conclusions  as  may  be 
rightly  formed.  For  this  purpose  it  will  be  necessary  to  deal 
briefly  with  each  site  individually. 
• Journal  R.A.S.E.,  Vol.  59,  1898,  pp.  137-172  ; Vol.  61,  1900,  pp.  116-138. 
