100 



MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT, 



blue-grass region of Kentucky, their owners are fortunate indeed. But 

 it seems probable that the excess of lime in such soils is not required 

 so much for the direct nutrition of the higher plants as for the support 

 of the processes by which the nitrogen of the soil is made available. 



For instance clover, which stores several times as much lime in its 

 tissues as either of the cereal crops, and which is also dependent upon 

 the help of soil bacteria for the securing of its nitrogen supply, has nearly 

 ceased to grow u\)cm the land useil in the experiments just alluded to, 

 and no fertilizer or manure i)ro(luces a normal growth of clover until 

 lime is added. 



In these experiments the fertilizing materials are distributed over 

 the three cereal crops, the mixed clover and timothy following without 

 any further fertilizing. Since 1900 lime has been applied to the surface 

 of one-half of each plot, both fertilized and unfertilized, after the land 

 lias been prepared for corn; the lime is plowed under in preparing the 

 land for oats, and plowed up again for wheat, thus securing a thorough 

 distribution. The effect upon clover is given below, in the average 

 weight of the first year's ha\-, chielly clover, for the three seasons, 1903, 

 1904 and 1905 : 



Treatment. 



Yield per 



acre 

 pounds. 



No fertilizer, no Unie 



No fertilizer, lime 



Phospliorus and potassium, no lime 



I'liospiiorus, potassium and linio . 



Fliosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, no lime 

 Phospliorus potassium, nitrogen and lime.. . 



Barnyard manure, no lime 



Barnyard manure and lime 



1,650 

 2.800 

 2,133 

 3,816 

 3.369 

 4.011 

 3.03.1 

 4,028 



These results (Icinonstratc llir iiccessilx of an abuiulant supply of 

 lime in the soil for tlic production of clover, but the more full)- we under- 

 stand the nature of the forces which make for the maintenance of soil 

 fertility, the greater becomes the relative importance of clover as a 

 pait of a systematic crop rotation; hence a soil which is naturally well 

 stored with lime must have a much greater agricultural value than one 

 in which the lime supply is deficient. 



Under natural conditions, the herbage which grows upon the soil 

 decays upon it again, thus returning not only the original mineral ele- 

 ments which it has drawn from the soil, but a little more nitrogen than 



