184 LEGUMINOS^ 



in sandy and dry pastures and heaths, often in the neighbourhood of the sea, 

 and bearing very small yellow flowers in June and July. The spreading stems 

 are from two to five inches long, and the seed-pods are very large for the 

 size of the plant. This is our only wild species, and is too small to be of 

 any use ; but a species of the south of Europe, which is very common on 

 fields and waste places about Montpellier, the Common Fenugreek {Trigonella 

 fcenum-grcecum), was so called by the Romans from their having adopted from 

 the Greeks the practice of cutting and drying it for fodder. This plant was 

 formerly very extensively cultivated in Italy, and is still sown by farmers in 

 the south of Europe. The seeds are farinaceous, slightly bitter, and of a 

 strong and disagreeable odour. The species is thoiight, however, by 

 Professor Burnett, to be the Hedysarum of Theophrastus and Dioscorides ; 

 the odour which we find so disgusting being then considered, as its name 

 imports, a sweet perfume. An oil extracted from the seeds of this species 

 was formerly used by the Hindoos to scent their unguents. 



8. Trefoil (Trifdlium). 

 * Legumes with several seeds. 



1. White or Dutch Clover (T. ripens). — Flowers in roundish heads, 

 stalked, finally bent back ; calyx-teeth unequal ; legumes 4-seeded ; stems 

 creeping. Perennial. The Dutch Clover is too common on our meadows, 

 and by our every country walk, to need minute description. Its white 

 blossoms are to be seen from May till September, tinged sometimes with 

 delicate pink, at others with chocolate colour. The flower is on a partial 

 stalk, and when it fades this footstalk bends down, and the legumes droop 

 amono- the brown withered corollas. The blossom has a sweet odour, which, 

 however, is not so powerful as that of the Purple Clover. The leaflets have 

 often a dark spot in the middle, and very generally a white line also, and 

 their edges are slightly serrated. 



This and the Purple Meadow Clover are most valuable fodder plants. 

 They are commonly cultivated in this country for pasturage, and one acre of 

 land sown with Clovers is foiuid to give as much food to horses and cattle 

 as would be yielded by three or four acres of land sown with grasses. 

 Chalky soils are peculiarly favourable to their growth, and several of the 

 Trefoils are found remarkably united with the superstratum of mountain 

 lime. If lime is powdered and thrown upon the soil, a crop of White Clover 

 will sometimes arise where it had not been previously cultivated or known 

 to exist. Mr. Moore stated, some years since, to the Philosophical Society 

 of Manchester, that wherever the brushwood of the lime district in Derby- 

 shire is burnt down, the Common White Clover springs up ; and that lime 

 strewed over some chalk soils, in which Clover seeds had been lying dormant, 

 had called them into action, and produced a luxuriant pasture ; on the grass 

 land around Stonehouse in Devon, Clover was produced by throwing over 

 the land the crumbled soil of the harbour rock, which is of the substance 

 commonly called Devonshire marble, and which is a species of mountain or 

 primitive limestone. 



It has been long a disputed point among botanists and antiquaries. 



