234 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A WORD FOR CLOVER. 



At a New York institute G. D. Brill said that as a fertilizer clover 

 has also great value in restoring fertility to soils exhausted by other 

 crops. By careful analysis of the tops of second growth clover and 

 the roots in the first nine inches of soil they have been found to con- 

 tain an amount of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, which if 

 bought in commercial fertilizers would cost from $20 to $30 per acre. 

 Clover can get this, first, because the roots on light soils are very deep, 

 often six feet, but the main part of the root is near the surface, where 

 this plant food is stored. Second, it has an immense leaf surface, and 

 so can handle an enormous quantity of water, and as all plants take 

 their food through the roots in solution, clover can get it from a more 

 dilute solution. Third, it shades the ground and makes the conditions 

 favorable for nitrification or making organic nitrogen available for other 

 plants. Fourth, more important than these, it has the power of taking^ 

 free nitrogen from the air. On the roots are little knobs, and inside 

 of these are bacteria which have the power of changing the free nitro- 

 gen of the air and combining it so that the clover plant feeds upon it. 

 Now, by plowing the clover under, a large amount of plant food is 

 stored in the soil in a form readily assimilable by other plants, enough 

 for two or three crops of wheat at thirty bushels per acre, or potatoes. 



Then, buy the best of seed, prepare the soil well and sow liberally. 

 Feed the hay to live-stock, return the manure to the soil and plow 

 under the roots, and the soil will increase in fertility. But if the hay 

 is sold from the farm it will be more rapidly exhausted than with 

 almost any other crop. 



WINTER PEARS. 



NEGLECTED FRUITS FOR MARKETING AND DESSERT. 



Summer is conspicuous for its variety of fruits, and winter for it» 

 paucity of them. Every one expects to have winter apples, and a few 

 people keep winter grapes ; but who puts down a supply of winter 

 pears ? Yet winter pears are as easy to grow as the summer and fall 

 kinds, and of good varieties there are a score or more. Some of them 

 keep as readily as apples. Those people are fortunate who have a dish 

 of winter pears on New Year's day in the northern states. In the 

 middle and southern states winter pears are scarcely known. In Mary- 



