270 
Desirable Agricultural Experiments. 
animals grazed on pasture liberally manured and devoted to 
them entirely, hay being eliminated as a farm crop. How 
cattle or sheep are to be fed in winter under such a system is 
not explained. As M. Ville estimates the cost of dung at 12s. 
to 14s. 6d. a ton, it is not surprising that he regards it as an 
exceedingly wasteful manure, and that he ridicules the idea of 
keeping livestock for the purpose of making it; but in this 
country we fancy we can produce it at a lower cost. 
If by any plan of manuring clover-sickness could be pre- 
vented, the system of growing clover every third year would be 
a hopeful one, provided that it was fed on the farm, partly in a 
green state, and partly in the form of hay. It would be more 
plausible, however, to propose a variation of leguminous crop- 
ping, with a longer rotation than one of three years, and yet 
one so arranged that a leguminous crop would be grown every 
third year. In the Journal of December 31, 1891 (vol. ii., 3rd 
series, page 870), Dr. Fream gave some particulars concerning 
a system in regular, and apparently successful, use in Germany, 
under which leguminous crops in great variety are grown and 
ploughed in, supplying all the nitrogen that other crops require. 
No livestock are kept, and only non-nitrogenous manures are 
purchased. Unfortunately, the rotation pursued is not de- 
scribed in the article.* 
In their article on “ The Sources of Nitrogen in our Legu- 
minous Crops,” in the same number of the Journal, Sir John 
Lawes and Dr. Gilbert refer to some experiments now being 
made on two hundred acres of land by Mr. Mason, of Eynsham 
Hall, Oxfordshire, in order to test the practical application of 
recently acquired knowledge in regard to the fixation of nitro- 
gen. Mr. Mason’s plan, briefly stated, is to grow mixed legu- 
minous crops, partly in place of roots, converting the produce in 
the first year into silage, and in the second year into hay; the 
assumption being that the land thus occupied for two years will 
be supplied with sufficient nitrogen from the atmosphere to 
allow of the subsequent growth of such crops as corn and 
potatoes, with the purchase of only non-nitrogenous manures. 
In brief, the plan is to grow first nitrogen-accumulating crops 
for consumption on the farm, and afterwards nitrogen-consuming 
crops for sale. This plan appears to me to point more hope- 
fully than any other yet made known to the direction in which 
present rotations of cropping are likely to be modified, in ac- 
cordance with the recently acquired information relating to 
nitrogen. Roots are very expensive crops to grow, and very ex- 
‘ Because it is not described in the foreign memoir. — \Y. F. 
