378 HANDY-BOOK OP HUSBANDRY. 



" means underrate the value of other manures, but they do 

 " fall into the custom of laying out the least possible amount of 

 " labor that they can on the contents of their barn-yards, and get 

 "them back into the soil. The manure cart is apt to be emptied 

 " on some field near the barn, and the ' back end of the back 

 " field,' to use the expression of one of my volunteer correspon- 

 " dents, never is visited by it. 



" No other class of farmers (I do not mean gardeners) with 

 " whom I am acquainted manure as highly as the men who make 

 "the freest use of clover the leading principle of their farm man- 

 *'agement. 



''Fairmount, N. Y, Oct. 23, 1869." 



While on this subject of the fertilizing effect of clover, I desire 

 to record my belief, that, theoretically considered, clover may 

 become a means for the more complete exhaustion of the soil in 

 the end. Fertility depends for one of its chief supports upon 

 mineral matters, of which even the best soils contain compara- 

 tively but a very small proportion. These are absolutely neces- 

 sary to the growth of all agricultural plants. 



Clover can create none of them. Its only ability is to develop 

 and make more readily available that which the soil already con- 

 tains, and, while a soil which has been so completely exhausted to 

 the depth of its shallow plowing, that it will produce neither 

 wheat nor corn, nor grass, may, by the aid of clover, have so much 

 of the fertilizing minerals of its subsoil brought into action as 

 to become more fertile than before, it may, by persistent plun- 

 dering, — by constantly taking off and bringing nothing back, — be 

 made so poor, (subsoil and all,) that not even clover will grow. 

 In this condition the land is called " clover sick," and to restore 

 it from this impoverishment, nothing will suffice but long-con- 

 tinued exposure to the atmosphere, by frequent plowing, or the 

 addition of enormous quantities of manure. Judiciously man- 

 aged, clover culture may be made the means of restoring the 

 most exhausted soils to more than their virgin fertility, and of 

 keeping their productiveness always at the top mark ; but employed 

 without judgment, it must in time (perhaps a very long time) 

 effect an absolute impoverishment. 



