2(52 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



which to fertilize the land for grass crops. We have a great deal 

 of good grass land which responds promptly to the action of 

 plaster, and plaster, where it does do well, is the cheapest manure 

 we can buy. Then, again, there is a good deal of land on which 

 plaster is as worthless as sand. It has been found by experience 

 during many years, that grass (I refer now to the grasses proper) 

 succeeds better when clover is sown with it than when sown 

 alone ; but it is only recently that we were able to understand 

 how this comes to be the case. It is due to the fact that clover 

 can and does obtain supples of food from sources inaccessible to 

 the grasses, and, in its turn, through decaying loaves and roots 

 gives up these supplies to the grass. 



An estimate was given yesterday with regard to the value of 

 clover hay for manure. I suppose the statement to be sufiSciently 

 accurate ; and yet, unless we save all the liquid excrement, we 

 cannot realize anything like that amount. In fact, the one promi- 

 nent reason why clover has been of no more repute among farmers 

 for its value for ' manure, is that we have not preserved the liquid 

 manures as we ought to have done. With herds-grass, the solid 

 portion of the excrement would be of more value than the liquid ; 

 with clover, it is the reverse. If you want the whole benefit of 

 clover hay, in its manurial quality, you must save the liquid ex- 

 crement by some absorbent. 



In common parlance we speak of both clover and herds-grass as 



grasses, and they have this in common — both are used for fodder •, 



but botanically they are quite unlike, and their requirements upon 



the soil, and their characters as shown by analysis, are very difler- 



ent. Clover has the power, somehow or otlior, of obtaining a 



large amount of nitrogen ; it has, also, the power to obtain from 



the soil a great deal else of food material which other plants cannot 



get. For instance, there is usually considerable potash in the 



soil, but far the greater part of it is usually in an insoluble state, 



and plants cannot appropriate it, except in small amounts, and by 



slow degrees, as it is liberated by the effects of weathering. If you 



turn up your soil and harrow it, you expose it to the dew and the 



rains, the rain water contains a little carbonic acid, and that helps 



liberate the potash in the soil. Now, herds-grass and Timothy 



cannot get the putash as easily as clover does, and what it gets it 



stores up. So it is with regard to nitrogen, which it obtains from 



somewhere and somehow. Nobody knows where or how it gets 



it, but it does get it, in large amounts, and that is what the 



