CLOVER CULTURE. 



ers have also noticed how difficult it is to maintain a blue- 

 .grass sod for a series of years, unless it is accompanied by white 

 clover. Blue grass maintains its selfish monopolizing policy 

 for a year or two, but is compell-ed to yield sooner or later to 

 the white clover and the two ever after grow together, for the 

 simple reason that the blue grass, being a greedy nitrogen feed- 

 er, and always nitrogen hungry after the natural resources of 

 the soil have been exhausted, is compelled to depend upon the 

 nitrogen furnished by the white clover. If blue grass were 

 nsed as a meadow grass, and the entire crop taken from the 

 soil, it would be clearly seen to be as exhaustive of fertility as 

 is timothy or grain crops. ' Every farmer understands that 

 all kinds of grain or grass crops grow more luxuriantly 

 when planted or sown with clover or on clover sod. This fact 

 points out the clear and wide distinction between the clovers 

 and the other grasses. All other grasses outside of the Le- 

 guminosae, the principally cultivated classes of which in Amer- 

 ica are the clovers, are great nitrogen feeders and always ni- 

 trogen hungry and, having no means of obtaining nitrogen 

 except from the soil itself, are dependent either upon farm 

 yard or artificial manure or the clovers for their supply, when 

 once the virgin fertility of the soil in nitrogen is exahusted. 



The most vital distinction, then, between the clovers and 

 the other grasses is this: that the clovers, togetherwith other 

 varieties QiLeguminosae, are able to obtain a supply of nitro- 

 gen, the most costly element of fertility, from a source 

 quite independent of the stored fertility of the soil or of ap- 

 plied manure. It is important for the farmer to keep this dis- 

 tinction in mind in order that he may understand not only 

 the reason why the cultivation of the clovers has always ac- 

 companied the introduction of improved farming, but also the 

 bearing which their cultivation will have upon the develop- 

 ment of the resources of the West, and in fact of the entire 

 Nation. 



The sources from which clover obtains nitrogen, the 

 relation which nitrogen sustains to the other two great ele- 

 ments of fertility in the soil, potash and phosphoric acid, and 

 the place which the clovers and other species of Lcguminosae 

 occupy of necessity in any cheap and practical feeding ration 

 and their relation to the improvement of live stock as well as 

 to the production of grains which will be demanded by the 

 rapidly increasing population in America, will be discussed 

 in the concluding chapters of this work. It is enough now 

 to point out the facts which are clearly recognized by agricul- 



