RED CLOVER. 77 



trying to learn still more of its habits and peculiarities. The expression, " To 

 live in clover," has become proverbial, and is another way of designating a 

 good living. With a field of clover knee high, or up to the eyes, means fat 

 cattle and swine and bunchy sheep. Some one styles the plant as ''The red 

 plnmed commander-in-chief of the mannrial forces." 



Ked clover was known and prized over 2,000 years ago by the Greeks and 

 Romans, but it can hardly be said to have been cultivated, even in the sim- 

 plest way, till used in England about 1G33 — 253 years ago, or 44 years 

 before the cultivation of perennial rye grass, and nearly 100 years before that 

 of any other of the true grasses. 



For a long time it was propagated by scattering the seed in the chaff, as it 

 accumulated at the stack or barn. 



Plants have their kinships — their rich relatives and their poor connec- 

 tions, as well as people, or any of our wild or domestic animals. The clo- 

 yers belong to a royal family of plants known as 



THE LEGUMIXOSiE, OR PULSE FAMILY. 



The fruit of such plants is usually in the form of a pod or legume, as a 

 type of which, we have that of the pea and beau. For the technical defini- 

 tion of the family, you will consult your botany. The Pulse Family con-, 

 tains, at the lowest estimate, G,500 species, and is excelled in numbers bj 

 one other only, viz. : the Compositai, which includes asters, golden rods, 

 sunflowers and dandelions. 



Plants of the pulse family are widely distributed in every climate and in 

 all kinds of soil. They vary in size from the little pussy clover to the giant 

 locust trees of Brazil. We comprehend only a small portion of their uses 

 and wealth when noticing those species which are cultivated in the United 

 States. Red, white, mammoth and alsike clovers. Lucerne or Alfalfa and 

 Sainfoin fill a place which could not well be supplied in our pastures and 

 meadows, while peas and beans are scarcely of more importance than the 

 peanut which would be missed in our country groceries and on the corners of 

 the street, as well as by the people of Africa and the tropical islands. The Pulse 

 Family is the most wonderful of all the families of plants in the enormous 

 numbers and variety of its useful products. Its wealth is fairly bewildering. 

 It contains barks of great use for tanning leather, many delicious perfumes, 

 valuable medicines, tough fibres useful for cords, ropes or coarse cloth. It 

 abounds in durable timber and in ornamental and fragrant woods. For 

 gums it beats the world and supplies also many valuable coloring materials. 

 It is well suplied with ornamental species. 



In the scientific description of a plant which has been so long and so well 

 known, there is scarcely any chance for originality. The following comes 

 about as near the mark as any and is mainly from Hooker's Flora of the 

 British Islands. 



trifolium, l. trefoil, clover. 



Herbs, usually low. Leaves digitality, rarely pinnately 3 foliolate; stipels 

 adnate to the petiole. Flowers capitate or sj^iked, rarely solitary, red, pur- 

 ple or white, rarely yellow; bracts small or 0, sometimes forming a toothed 

 involucre. Calyx teelh b, subequal. Petals persistent; wings longer than 

 the keel, the claws of both adnate to the staminal tube. Upper stamens free; 

 all the filaments or 5 of them dilated at the tip ; anthers uniform. Style 



