ON THE MIXED HERBAGE OF PERMANENT MEADOW. 
1 373 
Leguminosse, and to an increase in that of the Miscellanese, on plot 16. How far this 
is merely a matter of season, or has to be taken as indicating permanent change, 
remains to be proved as time goes on. 
The general result brought out by the botanical details is that, witb the mineral 
manure and the smaller amount of nitrate of soda, that is with the less forcing 
conditions, no one species of grass is in any such prominence as are some on plot 14 ; 
a considerably greater number contributing somewhat largely, and a greater number 
fairly, to the produce. Moreover, those which were the most, and very characteristi¬ 
cally, prominent on plot 14— Poa trivialis and Bromus mollis —are in insignificant 
amount on plot 16. Again, the two prevailing grasses of the locality, under usual 
conditions, Agrostis vulgaris and Festuca ovina, were all but banished with the larger, 
but were among the most prominent with the smaller, amount of nitrate; and a number 
of others which were in comparatively insignificant quantity on plot 14 characterised 
the herbage of plot 16. Thus, those which were the more prominent on plot 14 were 
of more rapid and freer growth than those which were so on plot 16 ; whilst, on the 
latter, a number of species of relatively meagre luxuriance maintained a fair position, 
yielding, upon the whole, with the less active struggle, a much more mixed gramineous 
herbage. Similar remarks, mutatis mutandis , apply also in some degree to the Legu¬ 
minosse, but to the Miscellanese in a greater degree than to them. 
We have throughout spoken of the manurial conditions provided on plot 14 as being, 
compared with those on plot 16, such as to greatly increase luxuriance relatively to 
maturing tendency of growth. Yet, as a matter of fact, the herbage on plot 14 was 
always much more forward and riper than that on 16. This result, apparently so 
anomalous, is in reality by no means so. The excessive amount of nitrate forced into 
great prominence a few very free-growing grasses, and these were characterised by 
early maturity; whilst the smaller quantity of nitrate favoured a number of grasses 
of much more sluggish development, and later growth. It thus necessarily happened 
that, with the conditions of greater luxuriance, we had at the same time, owing 
to the very characteristically different flora encouraged, greater maturation also than 
with the conditions of less luxuriant growth, and, relatively to these, a greater supply 
of the constituents known to promote maturation. 
As referred to in Part I., and as will be fully illustrated in Part III., the difference in 
the chemical composition of the produce of the two plots was quite consistent with 
the difference in the relative predominance of families and species, and with the 
relative condition of maturity described. Thus, coeteris 'paribus , the more mature a 
plant, the less will be the percentage of both mineral constituents and nitrogen in 
its dry substance. Again, speaking generally, the percentage of the mineral con¬ 
stituents is higher in the Leguminosse than in the Graminese, and higher still in the 
Miscellanese, of the mixed herbage; and the percentage of nitrogen is somewhat higher 
in the Miscellanese, and considerably higher in the Leguminosse, than in the Graminese. 
Quite consistently with these facts, the percentage, both of mineral constituents and 
MDCCCLXXXII. 8 N 
