BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1866, 26 August 1887, Page 7

BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

(By Our English Agbicui/tural Corbespondent.)

London, July 1. "A Summer of Smoke."

There is an old farm saw which tells us that — "If the ash comes out before the oak, we shall have a summer of smoke." If this be infallible, the ash must have come into leaf before the oak this year, though, not having any faith in a saying so impossible of explanation, I did not notice. At any rate we have " a summer of smoke," the June just ended having been the driest and hottest since 1868. Unfortunately the results will not be the same as those of 1868, which was one of the best harvests of the century, though not so good for other crops as for wheat. This will be a wheat year, too, only the wheat will not be equal to that of the earlier year referred to, and th 9 other crops will not be nearly as good. The reason is that the crops were too backward when the drought set in, and have not been able to stand it as they did in 1868. Even the wheats on light lands have suffered, while barley and oats are bending but on very short and light storaw, as a rule. la most parts of the country there has not beeH a drop of rain since June 3, and grass, as well as field crops, is now being burnt up by drought. The hay crop, now being gathered, is a very light one as far as meadow grass is concerned, but clovers are fairly luxuriant. Wheat is now in what is termed the " blooming" stage, having shot into ear very suddenly. The " blooming," as it is termed, is only the protrusion of the used-up anthers of the wheat after their work of fructification has been done inside the glumes. Anyhow we had a good blooming time, though it occurred invisibly. But the ears are not large, as a rule, and the grain will be in many parts of the country shrivelled if rain does not fall speedily. At present there are no signs of it, and gloomy anticipations as to the fate of spring corn fill the minds of light-land farmers. Mangels are doing well where they are thick enough, but turnips in many places have been eaten off by the " fly." The hop crop is in a critical condition, being generally infested with aphis. This week's reports are a little less discouraging than those of. a week ago, but in parts of Kent, in Sussex, and in Worcestershire the aphis blight is very serious.

Tlic lloyal Shaw.

The Royal Agricultural Show, at Newcastle" on-Tyne opens next week, as far as the imple* ment department is concerned, and the live stock exhibition on the following Monday. There are to be trials of steam engines, hand* power cream separators, and weighing machines for live stock. Trials of potato planters and diggers will not be held till next autumn. The entries of implements are not as numerous as usual, that being the only sign of agricultural depression. On the other hand, the entries of live stock, ex-olusive of poultry, number 1833 the greatest number got together since the great London Show in 1879. There are 500 entries of horses, 626' of cattle, 513 pens of sheep, and 194 ot pigs. Of poultry there are 405 entries. Butter and cheese do aiot show up well, with 107 entries of the former and 48 of the latter; hut the " Royal* does, not devote muoh of its prize moHey to dairy produce.

manures fa? Grass Lands.

Last week I paid a visit to Dys^s Wood, near Reading, where Mr Martin Jofca- Sutton is carrying out some very important experiments on grass land in order to ta&t the effects of various manures upon temporary and permanent pasture. The, experiments were com- •■ menced last year x and it is most interesting to see how the grass has done on plots manured in 1886 but no]b thfc year. The first field visited was a pasture of unknown age, in which six plots werb railed round, with iron hurdles in 1886 and treated differently. No. 1, unmannred last year, yiel.ds^ % ton 14cwt lqr of dry hay per acre, but wilt not prodwee nearly as muoh this season on account of drought. No. 2, dressed last; year with lewt sulphate of ammoi nia per acre, gave $ tons 4cwt 2qr of hay. It is better than plol; 1 this year, but there is a notable lack of wild olover (or suckling, as it is termed) in it. No. 3 was manured in 1886 with l^cwt nitrate of soda, and produced 2 tons per. acre of hay. This year it will not give muoh bulk, and there is the same absence of clovers in the plot as in the one last mentioned. On No. 4» dressed last year with 2cwt kaiaft and 3cwt superphosphate of lime, on the other hand, there is a oapital bottom of clovers and wild yetohes, the latter being almost entirely lackingin the plots previously referred to. Last year the hay produced was at the rate of 2 tons 2cwfc 2qr per acre, and a fairly, heavy crop has been grown this season. The dressing applied to plot 4 must be pronounced decidedly the most successful f.or. the two years together. To No. 5 last jrea* sulphate, of ammonia and 2cwfe k,ajnit w,er.e applied, the result being the heavies*, crpp grown on any of the six plots— nam»iy,. 2 tons sc,wt 3qr res* acre of hay. This yea*-, no. manure haying been applied, the crop is poor» and the egect of the nitrogenous manure in concentrating the stimulating effect of tike potash in the kainit upon tho clovers is obvious. These experiments were repeated in three other fields of new pasture, one being a three years' lay, and the results are. practically identical in all. The'manures \ie*e appliedjlast year, it will be understood^ but not this year, aod the resujts clearly show that to. force a great esop for one year waly there is nothing like sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda, but that permanent pasture is injured by the application of either manure, while it Is benefited by potash (in kainit) and hj superphosphate. *The mixture, used in plot 4— -2cwt kajnit and 3»wt superphosphftte—has done remarkably well wherever it has been tried, and may confidently be fecommended for the improvement of permanent pasture. A number, of other plots in the four fields have been dressed with various manures this year for the first time. The best results havebeen produced by 10' tons, per acre of farmyard manure made under cover-; but this dressing fe valued at £3. an ac*e» whereas the mixture referred to above as that used on plot 4 cost only 15s 9d an. acre. Results nearly as good have been obtained by using scwt per acre of decorticated cotton cake, costing £1 15s ; or from the application of 4cwt basic cinder (the new manure), 2cwt kainit, and lewt nitrate of soda,, costing $1 is 3d per acre ; or from lewt nitrate

of soda and gcwt muriate of potash, costing 17s Bd. But the most important results are those first referred to, as it is not enough to show what manure pro luces the best results in a single season without considering the after effects upon the grass. To force rank grasses, thus smothering the clovers and finer grasses, in permanent pasture, and so it is on a temporary pasture, except for the last year. Among the cheap dressings which look like paying well in the first year of application are 4cwt basic cinder and 2cwt kainit per acre, costing only 10s 6d ; and the same quantity of kainit with 4cwt ground coprolites, coating 16s 6d. The coprolites have beaten the basic cinder, but cost more. Half a ton of gypsum per acre has not done much good anywhere. Bones in' three forms, boiled, raw, and dissolved — ot course all in powder — have not done as well as the mix- j tures^ containing kainit; and, I repeat, no other dressing seems to promise as well in proportion to cost as one of 2cwt kainit and 3cwt superphosphate of lime. The " Beastly Cow." A good story has just been told of one of our bishops who had gone down into a rural district to visit some of the London street boys who are sent into the country every summer by charitable people for the benefit of their health. In addressing them, he congratulated them on the delights of their new residence. The boys looked unaccountably gloomy and downcast, and. the bishop kindly asked : " Were they not comfortable ? Had they any complaints to make ? " At last the leader raised his "hand, " The milk, my lord ! " " Why, what on earth do you mean ? The milk here is tenfold better than ever you had in London." "No, indeed, it ain't," cried the boy. "In London they always buys our milk out of a nice, clean shop. And here ? Why here they squeeges it out of a beastly cow!" Milk and Scarlatina. This story reminds me of a controversy now exciting much interest here. Dr Klein declares that certain eruptions on the teats of cows cause what he terms " milk scarlatina " in persons who consume the milk of the affected animals. Further, he asserts that he has discovered the microbe of the disease in milk from such cows. Now our veterinary authorities are entirely sceptical as to these statements, and the Agricultural department has commenced to make a systematic inquiry into il;s truth. The cows of the metropolis are to be examined, and if any are found with the eruptions on their udders, efforts will be made to ascertain whether any bad results can be traced to the disease among people consuming their milk. In all probability, if Dr Klein did find the microbe of scarlatina in milk from cows with eruptions on their teats, it came into the milk in an indirect manner. It is well known that milk is peculiarly liable to take up germs of disease, but it is not at all likely that there is any connection between the eruptions and scarlatina. { Adulterated Butter and Clieese. Either English dairy farmers or dealers who buy up their butter are using oleomargarine to mix with it, selling the produce as genuine butter. Skim-milk cheese " enriched " with some extraneous fat, too, is being sold as " Cheshire." At present those practices are not very extensive, but they pay so well that they are certain to become more and more ' common if we do not get stringent legislation to stop them. The Woburn Experiment. Yesterday I was one of a party to visit the trial fields of the Royal Agricultural Society at Woburn, in Bedfordshire, and the following are notes taken upon the occasion : — The primary object of the experiments was to test the accuracy of estimated values of manure obtained by the consumption by live stock of different kinds of purchased foods. These manurial values had been given in a table published by Mr (now Sir John) Lawes, and among them the values of manure from feeding one ton of cotton cake and maize meal respectively were estimated at £6 10s for the former and £1 11s for the latter — since altered, in a revised table, to £5 13s, and £1 5s Id. In order to test by actual farming experience the correctness of these comparative values, 16 acres in Stackyard Field, the soil of which is a light loam, were devoted to rotation experiments. There were four sets of rotations, in each of which every year seeds, wheat, roots, and barley, one acre to each, were grown, that being the order of the rotation. To half the plots manure made from feeding cotton cake and maize meal respectively was applied, and on the other half artificial equivalents of the manurial constituents of those foods were used. For several years there was practically no difference in the results, and if only the manures made by feeding the cotton cake and maize meal had been applied it might have been supposed that the chemists' estimates of manurial values were entirely wrong; but as there was also no difference in the results from the application of the artificial equivalents, although that of the cotton cake contained six times as much phosphoric acid, nine times as much lime, nine times as much potash, and more than four and a-half times as much nitrogen, the only possible conclusion was that the field was so much enriched by the former manure as to yield its maximum produce, more than which could not be forced by the richer manure. Upon this fact being ascertained measures were adopted for exhausting the excessive fertility of the soil. At the same time the acre plots were divided, one-half of each being manured less liberally than before and the other not at all. The result last year was that in three out of four cotton cake plots a considerably larger yield of wheat was obtained than on the corresponding maize meal plots, while it was equal in the remaining pair. In the case of barley, the cotton cake plots gave the greater produce in ail four comparisons. This year the cotton cake plots of wheat and barley look like beating the maize plots again, the superiority being especially observable where no manure at all hasgbeen put on for either the present or the previous crop in the rotation. The pea crop also shows very distinctly the superiority of manure from cotton cake. In the tares there is but little difference to be distinguished by the eye. In another set of experiments wheat and barley have been grown year after year for 10 successive years with the aid of various manures, as at Rothamsted, and the results so far have, in fche main, confirmed the conclusions derived from the experiments at that place. Mineral manures alone have produced very little effect, while nitrogenous manures, either alone or in combination with minerals, have never failed to bring forth an extra yield of corn, as compared with that of the unmanured plots. It is also to be noticed, by way of commentary upon the impression that the soil is exhausted by the application of nitrate of soda or sulphate of ammonia, that plots on which these manures alone have been applied every year have yielded largely increased crops, and the soil as yet shows ■ no sign of exhaustion. In some seasons nitrate of soda has given the best results and in others sulphate of ammonia, the former doing best in a dry season and the latter in a wet one. This " year the crops of wheat and barley grown from nitrate of 'soda are far superior to those produced from sulphate of ammonia. Year after year on plots from which the nitrogenous manure previously applied, hag been withheld

the yield of corn has been greatly reduced, in spite of the continued application of mineral manures, such as superphosphate of lime, and sulphates of potash, soda, and magnesia. This season neither wheat nor barley is as good as it has been in many previous years, the light soil at Woburn having been in great need of rain. The barley especially is light. Still the effects of the various manures are clearly enough to be seen, and the same lessons are taught as in previous years. The nitrogenous manures give striking results, while plots manured with minerals only have little if any more wheat, and not a great deal more barley on them than the unmanured plots. As usual, the best results of any are attained by the use of very liberal dressings of nitrogenous and mineral manures in combination. In some experiments intended to test the durability of various clovers English white has stood best, alsike next, and cow grass third. , Dutch white has not stood nearly as well as English. Common red clover has died off in a few years, in spite of any manuring, and Mr Carruthers concludes that none of the manures yet tried can cure what is known as " clover sickness " in land, and he doubts whether it can be cured by manuring at all. A very interesting experiment in laying down land to grass is being tried for the first time this year at Crawley Farm. Mixtures of grasses, with and without ryegrass are growing side by side for comparison, and comparatively thin seeding, with a great gain in cost, is being tested against thick sowing. So far as can be judged by the eye, the balance of advantage rests with the mixture without ryegrass, and in the other comparison with the comparatively thin seeding, taking cost into consideration. Half of each plot has been manured with scwtper acre of damaged decorticated cotton cake, with astonishing results, an exceedingly heavy crop having been cut for hay, excepting small patches left for inspection yesterday.