356 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the rye, and be in bettor healtli for the green food. In the spring your cows 

 will receive large benefit from this early pasturage, and Avhen you plow your field 

 for corn you will give this all the benefit of a manural crop, while 3^our land will 

 be clean of weeds. This plan may not succeed on stiff clay soils because of the 

 poaching by the feet of the cattle when the ground is soft ; but on well-drained 

 and sandy soils I think it is worth trying. 



There are certain exceptional conditions where the naked fallow, and the 

 nakedest kind of fallow, is the farmers only reliance, viz. : In exterminating 

 •certain insect pests, such as the wire-worm. If your fields are infested with the 

 wire worm, you will find he is a wiry customer to deal with. The birds will do 

 little for you, for they cannot dig down to the worms, but only forage on the 

 •surface, where the worm is seldom found. You may '^ drench your fields with 

 sulphuric acid in sufficient amount to destroy the worms, and then dress your 

 land with lime to neutralize the acid and thus form sulphate of lime or plaster, 

 and enrich your fields thereby," but you will find the expense enormous. You 

 may bait the worm by placing slices of potato in the ground and j^icking off by 

 hand the worms that gather on the potato, but to clean a large field of wire- 

 worms by this process you will find to be about as hopeless as dipping Grand 

 Eiver dry with a teaspoon. 



The wire-worm is in an impregnable fortress, and your only way to make him 

 surrender is to starve out the (jarrUon. You can only do this by absolutely cut- 

 ting off all food supplies for one season. Leave not a blade of grass or a weed 

 of any kind. The worm prefers the roots of the juicy wheat or the succulent 

 corn, but when brought down to famine diet he will keep healthy and lively on 

 Aveeds of almost any kind. You can speedily and effectually exterminate the 

 wretch only by absolute starvation. For this purpose let your fallow for one 

 season be absolutely naked ; stir the ground often to promote the speedy decay 

 of any vegetable matter in the soil so as to cut off all food supply at as early 

 date as possible, and at the end of the year you may shout victory ! You will 

 lose one crop by the process, but is not this better than year after year to share 

 your crops with this remorseless robber? 



Another marked benefit secured by green manuring arises from the different 

 habits of plants in regard to the distribution of their roots in the soil. One 

 class send the most of their roots deep into the soil, and draw most of their 

 mineral or ash food from the subsoil ; the roots of another class are mainly dis- 

 tributed in the surface soil, and draw their ash food mainly from this source. 

 This is especially true if the soil is clay, or if there is a hardpan beneath the 

 surface soil. I call the first class the deep-feeders ; the second class, the sur- 

 face-feeders. Clover and other leguminous plants are deep-feeders ; Avheat and 

 other cereals are surface feeders. Last year I sent my class in agricultural 

 oheinistry to test my statement in regard to the depth to which the clover sends 

 its roots. In a very tenacious clay soil they traced the tap root of a clover five 

 feet and some inches into the soil, Avhen the root broke and they lost the trail. 

 The tap root of the clover knows what it was made for — to tap the subsoil, and 

 draw off its mineral wealth. If you will examine the root of a pea, instead of 

 a tap root you will find three or four roots, nearly parallel, passing very deeply 

 into the soil. 



Leguminous plants, but especially the clover — the king of manural crops — 

 draw tlieir main supply of soil-food from the deep subsoil, and by their growth 

 and decay they accumulate these salts in the surface soil. I call them the soil 

 immiys to pump the resources of the subsoil up to the surface soil, where it is 



