How the Legumes Aid Us 273 



clover or cow peas sown among it is not only not injured 

 by the associated crop, but is actually helped, unless the 

 season is so extremely dry that moisture is taken from it 

 too fast. 



The peculiar value of the legumes as forage and hay- 

 making crops lies in the fact that they have far larger 

 amounts of protein than the more carbonaceous grasses, 

 and hence make a more complete ration for stock, and 

 this higher feeding value is gotten from plants that also 

 feed the soil in the most costly and one of the most im- 

 portant elements of plant food, and through their culture 

 the farmer is enabled to increase his crops of the hay- 

 making grasses. 



Hence it is becoming more and more evident that the 

 farmer of the future must be a legume farmer. If he finds 

 that clover fails where he formerly grew it well, he must 

 understand that it is usually his own fault, and should at 

 once study the reasons for the failure. In most cases he 

 will find that it is the result of an acidity in his soil or from 

 the deficiency of plant food or the lack of humus that 

 allows the soil to dry out in summer so that the clover dies. 

 He can cure the acidity with appHcations of lime; he can 

 restore the mineral plant foods that may be lacking and 

 through the use of some of the legume plants that he can 

 grow, he can restore the humus and get his land back to 

 the production of good crops of red clover. And no mat- 

 ter how many of the other legumes he may find useful as 

 catch crops, and in certain places, by far the larger part of 

 the country from Virginia northward, should depend on red 

 clover as the standard legume crop, just as the country 

 south of that should depend on the cow pea. 



