374  The  Wohurn  Field  Experiments,  1909. 
cake  (920  lb.  per  acre,  or  about  \ lb.  per  sheep  per  day)  with  a 
little  (1^  cwt.  per  acre)  clover  hay  chaff  ; on  plot  2,  maize 
meal  (920  lb.  per  acre)  with  clover  hay  chaff  ; on  plots  3 
and  4,  the  roots  along  with  clover  hay  chaff,  but  with 
neither  cake  nor  corn.  The  feeding-on  of  the  roots  con- 
tinued until  March  24,  the  land  being  ploughed  up  as  the 
sheep  moved  on. 
On  the  lower  half,  the  sheep  ate  off  the  swedes  (12  tons  per 
acre)  with  a little  clover  hay  chaff,  but  with  neither  cake  nor 
corn.  The  reason  for  doing  this,  though  cake  and  corn-made 
manure  had  been  previously  used  on  the  land,  was  that  other- 
wise the  land  would  have  lost  the  “ treading  ” which  experience 
has  shown,  on  land  of  this  light  character,  to  be  invaluable  for 
getting  a subsequent  barley  crop.  But  for  this  the  results  on 
the  two  halves  of  the  rotation  could  not  have  been  properly 
compared. 
On  April  14,  1909,  9 pecks  per  acre  of  “ Goldthorpe  ” 
barley  were  drilled  all  over  the  rotation,  and  a very  nice  crop 
was  obtained  which  continued  to  be  good  until  the  bad 
harvesting  weather  of  the  end  of  August  came.  The  plots, 
however,  did  not  show  any  marked  differences  as  the  result 
of  cake  or  corn  manuring,  and  it  was  hard  to  judge  how  they 
were  likely  to  turn  out.  The  barley  crop  was  cut  September 
6-7,  and  carted  September  9 ; but,  subsequently,  very  great 
difficulties  were  experienced  in  harvesting  the  crop.  The 
threshing  results  are  given  in  Table  VI.,  p.  375. 
It  will  be  observed,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  crops  of 
barley  were  in  all  cases  heavy,  and  that,  taking  them  as  a 
whole,  they  were  just  as  good  on  one  half  of  the  rotation  as  on 
the  other.  In  other  words,  about  the  same  crop  of  barley  was 
produced  when  the  previous  swede  crop  was  fed  off  by  sheep 
on  the  land  as  when  the  swede  crop  had  been  previously 
manured  with  farmyard  (bullock-fed)  manure.  The  crop  was 
considerably  heavier  than  that  of  1908,  and  it  certainly  seemed 
as  if  a maximum  had  been  obtained  on  the  plots  where  neither 
cake  nor  corn  (either  as  fed  to  sheep  or  as  given  to  bullocks  to 
make  farmyard  manure)  had  been  used,  as  on  those  to  which 
either  food  had  been  given  additionally.  This  would  account 
to  some  extent  for  the  advantages  of  cake-manuring  not 
“ telling  ” in  such  a year.  It  is  noticeable,  however,  that  the 
higher  nitrogenous  manuring  produced  proportionately  more 
straw. 
When  the  barley  was  valued,  the  bad  condition  in  which 
the  crop  was  harvested  told  much  upon  the  results.  The 
barleys  were  all  very  indifferent,  as  might  have  been  expected. 
This  was  especially  the  case  with  plot  1,  in  which  case  it 
was  very  difficult  to  separate  the  corn  from  the  ear  in 
