60 CUJV^K CULTURE. 



that its value has become fully understood, even by the most 

 intelligent farmers. Any plant that will of its own accord 

 restore the wastes of the soil, robber must grow in popular es- 

 timation year after year. It should be sown at the rate of 

 half a bushel to the acre and covered to a depth sufficient to 

 give it the same degree of light, heat and moisture which it 

 secures when self-sown on uncultivated fields or commons. 

 It must ever be borne in mind that all seeds on loose, well- 

 cultivated soils require a deeper covering than when self- 

 sown on unplowed land. 



Bur Clover. (Medicago denticulata.} This clover is 

 next in economic importance, and grows largely in California. 

 This, too, is a foreigner, which was early introduced in that 

 state, and has given itself a wide distribution, having spread 

 over the lower lands in the southern and central counties and 

 on some of the high lands as well. It has also been tried 

 with success in some parts of Texas and Mississippi. We 

 have seen thousands of sheep feeding in mid-summer on lands 

 in California apparently almost as bate as the highway. The 

 sheep seemed. 10 be in good condition, and by inquiry we 

 found they were feeding on the seeds of the bur clover. The 

 seed remaining begins to grow with the winter rains and 

 hence this clover furnishes a winter pasture in the leaves and 

 a summer pasture in the seeds. The only objection that can 

 be made to it as a forage plant for sheep is that the seeds be- 

 ing in the form of burs, (hence the popular name,) injures the 

 market value of the wool to a greater or less extent. Bur clo- 

 ver, like the white, of the northern states, has a growing 

 mate \n\he alfilaria (erodium cicutarium\ pronounced al-fi-la- 

 res, the local name being stork's bill, pin clover, pin grass and 

 filaria. The alfilaria is neither a grass nor a clover, but be- 

 longs to the geranium family and the two grow together for 

 the same reason that white clover and blue grass are a wedded 



Eair, bound together by a tie which no court can dissolve, the 

 ur clover evidently supplying the alfilaria with nitrogen. 



A closely related variety of bur clover ( medicago maculata) 

 is found in Western Nebraska, and no doubt over other por- 

 tions of the plain region. Nature is careful in her distribu- 

 tion of the legumes, and especially of the clovers, and provides 

 some variety of this invaluable plant for almostevery soil and 

 climate. 



Besides the foreign species above enumerated, there are 

 in the United States some forty species of native clovers, most 

 of them belonging to the Pacific Slope and the mountain 



