CLOVER CULTURE-THE WAY OUT. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



If the assumptions of the earlier chapters of this work be 

 correct, and the facts stated and the conclusions drawn in the 

 previous chapter prove that these are not mere assumptions, 

 but demonstrated facts and established verities, clover culture 

 becomes a problem of the first magnitude, not only to the 

 individual farmer wherever he may be located, but has impor- 

 tant bearings on the commercial and financial interests of the 

 entire nation. 



If it be true, as the concurrent testimony of the ablest 

 -and most reliable scientific investigators in the world with 

 one voice affirm, that the legumes are, to a great extent, inde- 

 pendent of soil nitrogen and supply themselves in preference 

 from the atmosphere, why should the farmer in the Atlantic 

 and Middle states invest his hard-earned dollars in nitrogen 

 in the form of nitrates, costing from ten to eighteen cents per 

 pound, when he can, through the medium of the tubercles 

 --on the roots of the legumes, draw on the limitless, inex- 

 haustible supply of nitrogen that floats over him daily in the 

 -atmosphere. The Connecticut Experiment Station estimates 

 that no less than half a million dollars are expended annually 

 by the farmers of that small, non-agricultural state, for com- 

 mercial fertilizers, more than one-third of which r is for 

 nitrogen. * Why this waste ? The market gardener must, 

 Tper force, purchase his nitrogen in the form of nitrates, dried 

 folopd, or in some other condensed shape, because he cannot 

 ^wait for the two years which the clover plant requires for its 

 perfection. He must have immediate results. Nor can he 

 tolerate any vegetable matter in the soil not thoroughly 



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