308 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



among the least exhaustive of all the crops that we raise; where the 

 soil is not carried away by the rainfall. The trouble is that we plant 

 on the hillsides where the land is easily washed and the rainfall carries 

 away our fertility and not the crop that we raise on it : hence, I think 

 sorg-hum, if your land is disposed to wash, is one of the best crops 

 that you can raise, and it is a crop that comes in at that season of the 

 ]^ear when we are most likely to have drouth, and we can keep up the 

 flow of the milk, with sorghum as with no other crop. It seems to me 

 more valuable than any other grain crop, as we have it at the season 

 of the year when there is a drouth, and it is a drouth resisting plant 

 and -seems to me to be superior to cow peas. Last year I had cow peas 

 on the south side of my field where there is more water ; they suftered 

 in the drouth, while the sorghum planted on the north side, where there 

 is less water did not suiter but remained green and furnished green feed 

 for my cows during the dry part of the season. 



Mr. Bruns : , Plant cow peas with the cane but do not plant too 

 thick. 



I think it is doubtful whether sorghum takes the fertility out of the 

 soil more than other crops and if you plant cow peas with it you are 

 just that much better off. 



Mr. Rogers : As to sorghum, it is a pretty good feed if you know 

 how to use it. As to its impoverishing the soil, I think we have a pre- 

 ponderance of evidence that it does impoverish the land. All we have 

 to do is to stop and see what it does. We know that it takes every- 

 thing out of the soil and puts nothing back, that is well established. 

 These Agricultural College boys here understand that. 



Mr. Erwin : Just point out how it does not put anything back. 

 Mr. Rogers : The hard fibrous roots of sorghum pack and firm 

 the land so that if you wish to sow blue grass afterwards, the sorghum 

 is a pretty good thing, but if you want to plow your land, it is hard ; 

 but the sorghum takes everything out of the soil, the nitrogen, the pot- 

 ash and phosphorous and puts nothing back. Whereas the pea and 

 clover family, all the leguminous plants in the catalogue take out very 

 little phosphorous, very little potash and put an abundance of nitrogen 

 in the soil. We see those little laboratories for making nitrogen on the 

 roots of the clovers and cow peas ; we do not know how they gather this 

 nitrogen, but we know they do gather it. Timothy does not much more 

 than keep the soul and l)ody together in anything that eats it; what we 

 want is clover or leguminous plants of some sort ; but I believe that 

 cane is a good cattle feed and firms the soil. 



Mr. England: Is cane better than corn fodder? For our work it 

 is no better. 



