NEUEN Ob MANURBS ON DHE 
PRODUCTION OF MUTTON. 
Results obtained in the Fourth Season (1900) at the 
Northumberland County Demonstration Farm of Cockle 
Park. | 
This experiment, started in the early spring of 1897, has 
mow reached the end of its fourth season, and in the 
December issues of this Journal for 1898 and 1899 an account 
- will be found of the results for the first three years. . As the 
scope, objects, and conditions of the experiment have already 
been set forth in detail, it is now only necessary to say that 
the main point of novelty in connection with the work 
consists in this:—that whereas hitherto the effects of manures 
on grass-land have usually been gauged by the weight of 
herbage which they have produced, they are here determined 
by the influence which the manurial substances have— 
through the medium of the pasture—exerted upon the live 
weight of the sheep with which the plots have been stocked. 
In order to make it possible to provide grazing room for a. 
sufficient number of animals each plot has an area of 3 acres, 
over and above which there is a corresponding set of sub- 
plots, each 54, acre in extent, on which the herbage is con- 
verted into hay. In this way the e‘fects or the manures are 
determined in terms both of animal increase and crop 
produce. 
When the experiment was started it was uncertain whether 
sheep would thrive and remain sound on such a small area 
as a three-acre plot, but the experience of the past four years 
has shown that there was no need to apprehend any such 
difficulty. Of 359 sheep used during the four seasons fer 
