130 RED CLOVER 
The young plant is tender and feeble, so millions of 
dollars are lost every year in the purchase of clover 
seed that starts to grow only to die from the effects of 
drouth or atmospheric changes. Its hay, though rich 
in feeding value, gives off a dust distressing and in- 
jurious to animals. It cannot be pastured without pro- 
ducing its death-dealing bloat. 
It robs the soil of its phosphorus and cannot be 
grown continuously on the same land without producing 
the “clover sick” soils upon which it refuses to con- 
tinue to grow, and it spurns the attempt to make it estab- 
lish its home in sandy, compact clay, prairie gumbo or 
worn-out soils, where it is needed the most. 
The author concedes that clover is valuable for main- 
taining the fertility of soils that are not worn, if used in 
the right manner. 
While clover grown for hay and seed alone may draw 
nitrogen into the soil and make the soil loose and friable, 
and thus improve soil ventilation, yet it must take valua- 
ble elements from the soil or it would not, after a time, 
refuse to grow on land where it had made its home for 
several years. 
If it had all the virtues claimed for it, why is it that 
in the regions where longest and mostly used we have 
the greatest number of acres of worn and worn-out 
soils ? 
The author points the reader to the great Volusia re- 
gion with its acres of “clover sick” and abandoned 
soils, where I0o acres in 1907 produced two small stacks 
of clover hay, and where lands that sold in 1803 for 
$37 per acre, in 1907 sold for $5 per acre. Lands that 
