CLOVER CUIvTURE. 51 



on the wet land, and the seed of the fowl meadow proving 

 worthless and so reported, we paid no further attention to the 

 plot until a year later, when, driving near it, our attention 

 was called to the hum of the bees apparently among the 

 slough grass surrounding the patch. We found on examina- 

 tion that the alsike was growing luxuriantly and was a favo- 

 rite with the bees, and it then occurred to us that we had 

 thus accidentally found the grass for wet sloughs that would 

 not, at the prices of tile in that locality, pay for drainage and 

 yet should be made productive in some way. We therefore 

 began sowing alsike as an experiment at the heads of sloughs 

 and learned, after the experience of a year or two, that an 

 excellent stmd could be secured by burning offthe slough grass 

 in the fall, sowing the seed in March and then mowing the 

 slough early in June in order to allow the alsike abundance of 

 air and sunlight. We have ever since recommended it 

 through the Homestead and it is now sown quite extensively 

 especially east of the grand divide in Iowa, and where our 

 farmers find it difficult to secure a profitable crop of anything 

 else from the sloughs so common in the Mississippi Valley. 



Alsike differs from both the red and mammoth and the 

 white. It grows, when supported by other grasses, taller than 

 the red but not so tall as the mammoth and is more slender 

 in the stalk, more succulent and hence makes even^better 

 hay. It has fuller heads, on long stems and intermediate in 

 size between the white and red. It differs from the white in 

 its habits of growth, the stalks when lying down not throw- 

 ing out rootlets at different points, and hence it is unable to 

 stand extreme drouth, and does not succeed well on the drier 

 lands. It partakes in its root growth somewhat of the habits 

 of both the red and the white, throwing down, in connection 

 with its main root, similar, but not so long as the red, a 

 number of fibrous roots. Its seed differs in color both from 

 the white and the red, but in size is similar to the white. Like 

 the white it is a perennial. It spends its main strength on the 

 production of the seed crop and throws up but little aftermath 

 in dry ground or in a dry season. It is, therefore, peculiarly 

 adapted to marsh lands, swales, sloughs and bottoms subject 

 to overflow, succeeding in lands of this character better than 

 any clover as yet introduced, but on the whole inferior to red 

 or mammoth for lands capable of regular cultivation, or what 

 in the west are termed "corn lands, "and inferior to the white 

 on the high, dry soils. Like all the clovers it does best on 

 calcareous or carboniferous soils. Like the white, when once 



