178 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



threshed for the seed with an ordinary machine, which would split most of 

 the cow peas. A crop of two tons or more of hay can be made on land in 

 fair state of fertility, and if the season is very dry the soy will make a heavier 

 crop than the cow pea, but in our experience the hay has not as great feeding 

 value as that from the cow pea, and there is far more waste of woody 

 stems, etc. 



We are inclined to believe that the soy bean is particularly well adapted 

 to the making of silage, and that the mixing of it with corn silage will be 

 found to be the most economical and profitable mode of using the crop. 

 Another use that can be made of the soy is to feed it down by hogs on the land 

 where it grows. If fed off by sheep and hogs, the plant will make a very 

 rapid improvement of the soil, and it may be that under some conditions this 

 may be the best use that can be made of either the soy or the cow pea. At 

 the Storrs Station, in Connecticut, the analysis of the soy places it far ahead 

 of the cow pea in manurial value, but the analysis is open to the objection 

 that the soy there attained maturity, while the cow pea was not at its best. 

 In the South, the fertilizing constituents in the two would not be far apart, 

 and the weight of crop would usually be in favor of the peas. In the North 

 it can be used as a green manure crop if accompanied with a dressing of lime. 

 But, as a rule, green manuring is poor practice anywhere, and is ruinous 

 to the soil in the South. 



THE VELVET BEAN. 



In general appearance this plant closely resembles the ranker growing 

 varieties of the cow pea, but the blooms differ and the pods are very different 

 from those of the cow peas, being shorter and thickly covered with velvety 

 hairs, from which the plant gets its name. It is a member of the same great 

 order as the cow pea, and, like it, can get nitrogen through the agency of its 

 root tubercles. There is no plant of its class which makes an equal amount 

 of growth to the velvet bean ; and it will furnish more organic matter to the 

 soil than any other plant in the same climate. But it is unfortunately a 

 plant that requires a very long season for maturing, and can never attain 

 the importance of the cow pea north of the Gulf coast. It will, in a favor- 

 able season, mature its seed as far north as Central-Eastern North Carolina, 

 but to do this there it must be planted in April, and will then mature about 

 the first of October. This long season precludes its use after small grain 

 and among corn as the cow pea is used, and it will never compete with the 

 cow pea north of Florida. 



At the Alabama Station crops of oats were sown, after turning under vel- 

 vet bean vines and velvet bean stubble, cow pea vines and cow pea stubble, and 



