12. The Chemical Composition of Grass from Plots Fertilized and Grazed Intensively 1

Research on problems of pasture improvement is not a recent development, having attracted the attention of American as well as foreign experiment stations soon after they were founded. The earlier work, however, was confined in large measure to empirical manuring and fertilizing tests, with only sporadic attempts to study the effects of such treatment and of grazing on the botanical and chemical composition of the herbage. While not wishing to minimize in any way the importance of this earlier work, limitations of space require that we pass along to the more.recent intensive studies, made largely in England and Germany and stimulated in large measure, no doubt, by the introduction into Germany during the World War, and later into England, of an intensive system of nitrogenous fertilizing and grazing of grass lands. Among the more important of these recent researches are those carried on by Woodman and his colleagues at the School of Agriculture at Cambridge University, England; by Stapledon and his associates at the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Aberystwyth, Wales; by various members of the staff of the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland; by Shutt and his co-workers at the Dominion Experimental Farm, Ottawa, Canada; and by Aston in New Zealand. The findings of these workers have all been published within the past four years, a fact which reveals the great stimulus the work has lately received.