BesiruUe Agricultural 'Experiments. 
267 
upon a certain percentage of deduction from, the values given in 
the Eothamsted table of manurial values, or any similar table 
compiled some years ago. 
As to the further question of whether cattle kept cheaply 
up to the age of two years, and then fed for the butcher until they 
were three years old or more, would pay as well as or better 
than those fed under the conditions of the first set of trials, it 
would, as already stated, have to be the subject of a separate 
test, if tried at all. It would be a difiicult problem to settle by 
experiment, as the animals fed cheaply, and just kept growing, 
for two years, if managed under the most favourable conditions 
as to economy of feeding, would be so shifted about that the 
valuation of their keep would be, in the main, a mere estimate. 
It is doubtful whether the trial would be worth the trouble it 
would give, because the crux of the question at issue must 
always be mainly a circumstantial one. It would be absurd 
to tell a man who can run his cattle on free pasturage in 
America, or even one who has hundreds of acres of nearly free 
grazings in Ireland, that he would do better by fattening his 
cattle from birth than by letting them run and grow into 
money at a trifling expense. Such breeders are quite right in 
keeping their animals cheaply for a couple of years, whether 
they sell them as stores or ultimately fatten them. On the 
other hand, breeders who have no cheap grazing land hardly 
need convincing nowadays that their most profitable course is 
to make their animals grow and fatten at the same time. 
What it would be highly desirable to prove in this connection is 
whether it pays better, as a rule, to buy stores two years of age 
or more to fatten, or to breed or buy calves to fatten from the 
earliest age. But, seeing that two-year-old stores may be 50 per 
cent, dearer in one year than in another, it is not easy to say 
how this question can be decided otherwise than by the 
lengthened experience of feeders who have tried both systems, 
or by the collation of results obtained by a great number of the 
followers of each practice. 
Turning to a different class of experiments, the further 
elucidation of the great Nitrogen Question at once presents 
itself as a highly desirable object. The important papers con- 
tributed to this Journal by Sir John Lawes and Dr. Gilbert, 
Dr. Munro, and Dr. Fream, and the numerous explanatory 
articles which the last named writer has published in agricul- 
tural papers, have made all careful readers of agricultural lite- 
rature familiar with the recent discoveries of science in this 
connection. A theory long maintained by certain foreign 
