148 Additional Crops for Cows and Sheep. 



annual dressing of farmyard manure free from grass seeds 

 greatly benefits the crop. The great growths, often amounting 

 to 20 tons of green-stuff in a year, are doubtless largely 

 due to the fact that, like other legumes, lucerne can utilise 

 the free nitrogen of the air, and that its deep roots collect 

 other plant food from such a depth of subsoil. In spite 

 of the heavy cropping over a long series of years — I have 

 seen crops in full vigour on light loams in Norfolk after 

 thirty years, and after twenty years on the Cambridgeshire 

 Fens — the land is left in good heart when broken up, as 

 the stump contains much manurial matter. As a rule when 

 the plant weakens it is advisable to sow fresh fields. 



Sainfoin, or Saint Foin, is a crop which might be more 

 extensively grown, as it is such an excellent food for sheep 

 both when green and as hay ; it is also well suited for soiling 

 to cows. It grows well on calcareous soils, and the crop is 

 pretty much confined to these and a few other light soils. That 

 it is well suited to heavier soils was clearly demonstrated by the 

 fact that when miles of poor and run-out heavy clay land in 

 North Bedfordshire went out of cultivation in the wet years 

 about 1879, and tenants could not be obtained at five shillings 

 per acre, the owners worked it at good profit by growing sain- 

 foin and selling the hay. I saw many crops which stood five 

 or seven years, and were then as good as any I ever saw in 

 Wilts, or Hants. Not only is the soil heavy and wet there, but 

 according to meteorological observations there is nothing colder 

 in Great Britain, the district having a January mean average of 

 31° F. : it has, however, a correspondingly hot summer record. 

 The range of soil suitable to sainfoin is evidently wider than is 

 commonly accepted. Its value compared with that of rotation 

 grasses (under which it is included in the Returns) lies in the 

 lengthened period it will remain profitable, the limit of which 

 is, with few exceptions, seven years. Owing to its popularity 

 where it is grown extensively, land is often too tired of 

 sainfoin to grow it for longer than four or five years, one 

 seeding in twenty-five years or so being as much as most 

 land will stand if it is to remain productive for the full 

 seven years. There is a variety known as Giant Sainfoin 

 which comes quickly to maturity, grows very heavy crops, 

 but is not profitable for more than two years. The seed 

 is sown in the husk or milled (husked), and the quantity 

 per acre is 50 lb. milled seed or 4 bushels of the other, 

 where it is sown without other mixture than trefoil, which is 

 occasionally employed as a nurse during the first year. It is, 

 liowever, sometimes sown with other rotation grasses. It 

 is customary to drill it in a cereal crop in rows 9 to 12 in. 

 apart in March and April. The seed may be put in to an inch 



