CLOVER AS A PREPARATORY CROP FOR WHEAT. .(.gg 



do not much advance the true theory of certain agricultural prac- 

 tices. It is only by carefully investigating- subjects like the one 

 under consideration, that positive proofs are given showing the 

 correctness of intelligent observers in the fields. Many years ago 

 I made a great many experiments relative to the chemistry of farm- 

 yard manure, and then showed, amongst other particulars, that 

 manure spread at once on the land, need not there and then be 

 plowed in, inasmuch as neither a broiling sun nor a sweeping and 

 drying wind will cause the slightest loss of ammonia, and that, 

 therefore, the old-fashioned farmer who carts his manure on the 

 land as soon as he can, and spreads it at once, but who plows it in 

 at his convenience, acts in perfect accordance with correct chemi- 

 cal principles involved in the management of farmyard manure. 

 On the present occasion my main object has been to show, not 

 merely by reasoning on the subject, but by actual experiments, 

 that the larger the amounts of nitrogen, potash, soda, lime, phos- 

 phoric acid, &c., which are removed from the land in a clover crop, 

 the better it is, nevertheless, made thereby, for producing in the 

 succeeding year an abundant crop of wheat, other circumstances 

 being favorable to its growth. 



Indeed no kind of manure can be compared in point of efficacy 

 for wheat to the manuring which the land gets in a really good 

 crop of clover. The farmer who wishes to derive the full benefit 

 from his clover-lay, should plow it up for wheat as soon as possible 

 in the autumn, and leave it in a rough state as long as is admissable 

 in order that the air may find fi'ee access into the land, and the 

 organic remains left in so much abundance in a good crop of clover 

 be changed into plant-food ; more especially, in other words, in 

 order that the crude nitrogenous organic matter in the clover roots 

 and decaying leaves may have tiaie to become transformed into 

 ammoniacal compounds, and these in the course of time into 

 nitrates, which I am strongly inclined to think is the form in which 

 nitrogen is assimilated, par excellence, by cereal crops, and in 

 which, at all events, it is more eflScacious than in any other state 

 of combination wherein it may be used as a fertilizer. 



When the clover-lay is plowed up early, the decay of the clover 

 is sufficiently advanced by the time the young wheat-plant stands 

 in need of readily available nitrogenous food, and this being uni- 

 formly distributed through the whole of the cultivated soil, is ready 

 to benefit every single plant. This equal and abundant distribu- 

 tion of food, peculiarly valuable to cereals, is a great advantage. 



