FORAGE CROPS. 377 



" the clover add to the land the fertilizing properties desired in 

 '* the necessary quantities to replace all that is taken off by the 

 *' crops named, and leave a satisfactory balance in bank to go to 

 " new account ? " 



Here follow copious extracts from Dr. Voelcker's paper, quoted 

 from above. ^ 



Mr. Geddes concludes as follows : — 



" About the time this great agricultural chemist, who perhaps 

 "stands at the head of his profession, was delivering the lecture 

 " from which I have been making quotations, before the Royal 

 " Agricultural Society of England, I was writing articles for the 

 *' readers of the T'r//'«w^, urging the use of clover as a manure, — using 

 "myownandmy neighbors' experience from which to draw my facts. 

 " I am not a little pleased at finding that this great chemist has got 

 " out of his laboratory and gone into the field for his facts, and then 

 "carried his facts, so obtained, into the laboratory, and gi\cn a 

 " scientific explanation of them. His language is vastly stionger 

 "than any I have ever used in favor of clover as compared with 

 " other manures. His comparison of clover with Peruvian guano 

 " goes further than I have ever gone, even in the heat of debate, 

 "in an agricultural club meeting. 



" In addition to the advantages growing out of the use of clover 

 "as a manure that have been stated by the learned professor, I 

 "wish to call attention to the important fact that, as the clover 

 "grows evenly all over the ground, it will, in its decomposition, 

 *' reach with its fertilizing powers every square inch of land. No 

 "reasonable expenditure of labor will so break up and distribute 

 *' barn-yard manure that every part of the surface of the soil will 

 " be reached. 



" All grain-growers that have extensively used clover as a 

 " fertilizer have thereby enormously increased the quantity of 

 *' barn-yard manure made on their farms ; and it certainly should be 

 " comforting to that class of men who still believe that additional 

 " value is imparted to vegetable matter by drawing it from the 

 " field to the barn, and passing it through the bodies of farm stock, 

 " and then drawing it back to the field, to learn that by raising 

 " large crops of clover, and turning a part of them into the ground, 

 " it will certainly follow that the barn-yard manure will be greatly 

 " increased in quantity by the increased yields of straw and corn- 

 " stalks produced by the clover. 



" The men who do the most at manuring with clover by no 



