672 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the Hercules amoug plauls, the best friend of agriculture, the key 

 to successful farming. But what does all this amount to while our 

 hypothesis holds true that our best friend has gone back on us, 

 and this brings us to the second part of our subject, how to get it. 

 How did we loose it? How have we treated it? What have we 

 ever done for the clover plants? Clover likes a little lime and mag- 

 nesia once in a while. We have recognized this and fired it on with 

 a shovel. Lime is to the soil what medicine is to the system, and 

 in proper doses at the required time is good, but you can't supply 

 enough at one time to do for 15 or 20 years and not cause injury. 

 Clover likes a little potash and phosphorus and we have added 5U 

 per cent, sulphuric acid; sulphur means brimstone, and a union of 

 sulphuric acid and carbon make carbonic acid gas to which all life 

 must succumb. If our friend asks tish scrap, for pity sake let us give 

 it ground stone in preference to such a breakfast. Clover must have 

 the assistance of these minute organisms called bacteria, and they 

 can no more live on wind alone than you and I can, but require the 

 presence of decaying vegetable or animal matter in the soil. We 

 have taken the first crop oft" for hay, the second crop olf for seed, have 

 hauled the manure ouc on the oats stubble and plowed it down to 

 the bottom of the furrow, thereby depleting the land of both bac- 

 teria and moisture, and then by way of cultivation to the clover we 

 have turned in the stock after the seed comes off and allowed them 

 to bite and trample until the ground freezes in the fall. 



Why has our friend gone back on us? W^e often hear ourselves 

 saying we can't raise clover any more, and we have said it so often 

 until we have really come to believe it. It is simply a stereotyped 

 expression and means nothing. Whatever the fact is, clover does 

 not grow spontaneously except in very rare years when the tempera- 

 ture and humidity of the air is something near what it should be 

 every year in the soil. Can't raise clover in Juniata county? Our 

 geologists will tell us this evening if they tell us the truth, that 

 there is no richer soil naturally than we have right here in Juniata 

 count}', even the black soil of North Russia, North Dakotah, etc., 

 cannot begin to compare with it in their natural condition, but they 

 are filled with vegetable matter, decayed and decaying, and to this 

 fact alone lies their power to so far outdo us in the quality and quan- 

 tity of grain which they raise, even against such fearful odds of 

 climatic conditions and lack of rainfall. And the same may be 

 said of the famous Red River Valle}^, except as to climate, but as 

 to natural strength of soil they are far enough behind. The only 

 natural advantage which California or Cuba has over us is one of 

 climate, but deplete such land of the vegetable matter which they 

 contain and our poorest pine knolls would look like an oasis beside 

 them. Who has not heard of the fertile farms of New Jersey. 



Let me tell you friends, many of those fertile farms is sand. Now 

 what is there in sand to raise a crop with? Why nothing at all. A 

 little of it is good to keep land from baking and to make cultivation 

 a little easier, but the rest of it is an obstacle to be overcome. Yet 

 those fellows are stirring it around and raising the best of crops; 

 but they well understand the difference between a crop growing 

 and growing a crop. They grow their crops and we can grow clover 

 if we will half try. Scattering a little clover seed over the wheat 



