402 
MESSRS. J. B. LAWES AND J. H. GILBERT ON THE RESULTS OF 
A comparison of Table XXXI. with Table XXIX. will show that the excess of pro¬ 
duce over the average was very much less in 1868 than in 1869, and that it was the 
most considerable under the influence of highly nitrogenous in conjunction with 
mineral manures. Indeed, with mineral manures alone (plot 7) the increase was very 
small, and without manure there was even a considerable deficiency in this season, 
which nevertheless is taken as, upon the whole, illustrative of high productiveness. 
There are, in fact, other seasons giving more produce on one or other of the plots; 
but, excepting 1869, there is no other that gives so much on each of the three selected 
highly-manured plots. The season was, therefore, one of great luxuriance with high 
manuring, but of deficient growth with low manuring. 
The season of 1874 gave more uniformly bad results than did that of 1868 give 
uniformly good ones ; the produce being the twentieth, or lowest, in order of amount on 
two of the highly-manured plots, seventeenth on the third, eighteenth on the mineral 
manured, and seventeenth on the unmanured plot. 
The difference between the produce of the two seasons was the most marked where 
ammonia-salts were used; there being about 1 \ ton less hay in 1874 than in 1868 where 
the smaller amount of ammonia-salts was applied (plot 9), and nearly 2 tons less with 
the larger amount (plot 11); whilst, with the nitrate of soda, the produce in the 
reputed good season was only about 1 ton more than in the reputed bad one. This 
was due, however, not to any deficiency of growth with the nitrate in the good season, 
but to much better growth with it than with the ammonia-salts in the bad season—a 
result explained by the fact of the less dependence of the herbage growing under the 
influence of the nitrate on atmospheric supplies of moisture during the period of 
active vegetation. 
In 1867, the season previous to the productive one of 1868, there had been fairly 
average both first and second crops. Qctober and November were considerably defi¬ 
cient in rain, and both were colder than usual. December was characterised by great 
and rapid variations of temperature and barometric pressure, some extremely heavy 
gales, sometimes frost, snow, and sleet, at others very warm weather, with (in the 
aggregate) a fair amount of total fall. Nearly the first half of January (1868) was 
also very cold, but from that time to the end of the summer the weather was unusually 
warm. February, March, April, May, and June, were, indeed, all considerably warmer 
than the average. The average temperature of April had, however, frequently, and 
that of May and June occasionally, been exceeded in the corresponding months of 
other years ; but the average temperature of the three months together had only once 
been exceeded in any corresponding three months in 98 years—namely, in 1865— 
when, though April was hotter, May and June were not quite so hot; and the average 
temperature of the whole period from the middle of January to the end of June was 
only exceeded in 1822. Concurrently with this long-continued warm weather, there 
was a considerable excess of rain in January, with in the early part of the month 
several gales of wind; there was scarcely the average fall in February, a slight excess 
