90 HUNGARIAN 
but that part of the field previously in hungarian was 
more easily cultivated. 
Farmers will condemn hungarian without foundation, 
and say that it is a robber of the soil, and yet raise year 
after year timothy, which I say and can prove is the 
meanest soil robber on the American farm. Mean, be- 
cause J know of no more certain way to hasten the total 
exhaustion of the soil than to grow timothy year after 
year. On my farm I shun it as I would a rattlesnake. 
It takes six years of the best of treatment to rebuild 
soil upon which timothy has been grown for three or 
four years. 
I know of fields, once rich, almost utterly made unfit 
for the growing of crops by the growing of timothy on 
them for a great number of years. 
If I was forced to buy hay, I would rather pay $20 
per ton for timothy hay than grow it on my farm. But 
I have digressed, I was to say something of the value 
of hungarian as a producer of organic matter. 
It is said that a ton of hungarian in blossom contains 
twenty pounds of nitrogen, five and one-half pounds of 
phosphoric acid and seventeen pounds of potash. 
It takes from one to one and one-half bushels of seed 
to sow an acre, worth generally from $1.50 per bushel, 
or $1.50 to $2.25 per acre. If but three tons of hun- 
garian to the acre is grown and same is plowed under, 
you get 60 pounds of nitrogen to the acre. It will 
take six tons of barnyard manure to produce 60 pounds 
of nitrogen, and six tons of manure is worth not less 
than $1.50 per ton, or $9. 
In addition to the large amount of nitrogen and potash 
