1212 
MESSES. J. B. LAWES, J. H. GILBERT, AND M. T. MASTERS, 
In addition to the foregoing, it may be mentioned that seedlings of the common 
oak, Quercus Robur L., occasionally come up in small numbers near tbe trees, but 
tbey are never able to maintain tbemselves, and may be passed over without further 
notice. 
The nomenclature of the species which has been adopted is that of Sir J. Hooker’s 
c Student’s Flora.’ 
The classification into gramineous, leguminous, and miscellaneous plants has many 
practical advantages for our special purpose. Grasses constitute by far the largest 
proportion of the plants found on the plots; Leguminosae are very distinct in many 
aspects, and, as is more fully shown in the sections treating of the effects of the 
various manures, they often manifest contrary tendencies to those of the grasses—a cir¬ 
cumstance not to be wondered at when it is remembered how great is the difference 
between the leaves and the roots of most grasses and those of Leguminosae, and coin- 
cidently how different are the requirements of the two. 
The relation of the various miscellaneous orders to the grasses, and to the legu¬ 
minous plants, and to one another, cannot be dealt with in a few generalising 
paragraphs. The mode of growth, and the root-development, of most of them are, 
speaking generally, much more like those of the leguminous plants than those of the 
grasses. That their greater or less relative prevalence is very much an affair of season, 
encouraging or discouraging, as the case may be, the growth of their competitors, the 
grasses, is shown in the subsequent sections relating to the several plants and plots. 
Again, though present conditions avail much in regulating the distribution and com¬ 
parative prevalence of various groups of plants, it is now well recognised that causes 
anterior to the existing order of things have determined the existence of larger or 
smaller number of the species of each particular family. 
The alleged antagonisms between 'plants .— Bureau de La martyr* was one of the 
first to call attention to the apparent antagonism of certain plants, and to their alter¬ 
nate predominance, the one over the other—a fact frequently observed in the case of 
forests. He pointed out that grasses were in his experience the most powerful 
enemies of Saintfoin and of Lucerne ; that they overcome them when growing together, 
without however being able to destroy them utterly. Moreover, he remarked that 
in some isolated plateaux never manured or irrigated, he saw, five or six times in the 
course of 30 years, grasses and Leguminosae lose and regain the prominence one over 
the other. Similar phenomena have been observed at Hothamsted, as will be illus¬ 
trated in the sequel. 
When, however, as at Hothamsted, investigation is pushed further, and when parti¬ 
cular species of grasses, or of Leguminosae, &c., are examined as to their behaviour 
* “Memoire sur Talfcernance, ou sur ce probleme: la succession alternative dans la reproduction des 
especes vegetales, vivantes en societe, est elle une loi generale de la nature ? ”—Ann. Sc. Nat., Ser. 1,1825, 
vol. 5, p. 50. See also Alphonse de Candolle, ‘ Geographic Botanique,’ tom. i., p. 472. 
