FORAGE CROPS. 3Y1 



sweeping and drying wind will cause the slightest loss of ammonia, 

 and that, therefore, the old-fashioned farmer who carts his manure 

 on the land as soon as he can, and spreads it at once, but who 

 plows it in at his convenience, acts in perfect accordance with 

 correct chemical principles involved in the management of farm- 

 yard manure. On the present occasion my main object has been 

 to show, not merely by reasoning on the subject, but by actual 

 experiments, that the larger the amounts of nitrogen, potash, soda, 

 lime, phosphoric acid, etc., which are removed from the land in a 

 clover crop, the better it is, nevertheless, made thereby for pro- 

 ducing in the succeeding year an abundant crop of wheat, other 

 circumstances being favorable to its growth. 



" Indeed no kind of manure can be compared, in point of effi- 

 cacy for wheat, to the manuring which the land gets in a really 

 good crop of clover. The farmer who wishes to derive the full 

 benefit from his clover-lay, should plow it up for wheat as soon 

 as possible in the autumn, and leave it in a rough state as long as 

 is admissible, in order that the air may find free access into the 

 land, and the organic remains left in so much abundance in a good 

 crop of clover be changed into plant-food ; more especially, in 

 other words, in order that the crude nitrogenous organic matter in 

 the clover-roots and decaying leaves may have time to become 

 transformed into ammoniacal compounds, and these, in the course 

 of time, into nitrates, which I am strongly inclined to think is the 

 form in which nitrogen is assimilated, par excellence^ by cereal 

 crops, and in which, at all events, it is more efficacious than 

 in anv other state of combination wherein it may be used as a 

 fertilizer. 



" When the clover-lay is plowed up early, the decay of the 

 clover is sufficiently advanced by the time the young wheat-plant 

 stands in need of readily available nitrogenous food, and this, being 

 uniformly distributed through the whole of the cultivated soil, is 

 ready to benefit every single plant. This equal and abundant dis- 

 tribution of food, peculiarly valuable to cereals, is a great advan- 

 tage, and speaks strongly in favor of clover as a preparatory crop 

 for wheat. 



" Nitrate of soda, an excellent spring top-dressing for wheat and 

 cereals in general, in some seasons fails to produce as good an 

 effect as in others. In very dry springs the rain-fall is not suffi- 

 cient to wash it properly into the soil and to distribute it equally, 

 and in very wet seasons it is apt to be washed either into the drains 

 or into a stratum of the soil not accessible to the roots of the young 

 wheat. As, therefore, the character of the approaching season 



