there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres 

 of alkali land covered with nothing but sweet 

 clover, for nothing else will grow. A bee-keeper 

 wuom I know located in that vicinity struck a bo- 

 nanza, for no ranchman or farmer will invade his 

 territory at least not till all the other available 

 land is taken up. The time may come, when land 

 is scarce, when the ranchman will be called on to 

 use the alkali land and grow sweet clover for a 

 hay crop. Then, perhaps, the world will wake 

 up and discover that it is not an enemy but a 

 friend. ED.] 



DR. C. C. MILLER in GLEANINGS. 



Clippings from The Rural New-Yorker. 



There has been a great development in public opin- 

 ion regarding the value of sweet clover. Up to this 

 season most farmers who ever saw it growing have 

 regarded it as a weed. Many have seen it growing 

 along the line of railroads and classed it with burdock 

 or ragweed. It now appears that sweet clover is one 

 of the hardiest of the legumes, that it will grow in 

 poor soils where other clovers die, and that it is 

 one of the best crops to introduce alfalfa. The sweet 

 clover is winning its way to a fair place among the 

 plants to be tested. March 19, 1909. 



Sweet clover is a wayside weed. Most people 

 think it a pest. We are beginning to see that it has 

 noble qualities. An orphan asylum in an Ohio city 

 refuses to tell people adopting children from it any- 

 thing about the parentage of the orphans. Whether 

 sprung from wayside weeds or from the budded plants 

 of hereditary culture, no one about the child knows. 

 The results seem to show that most of our common 

 human weeds are precious plants so long as no one 

 can call them weeds and prove it. To have wasted 

 the melilotus for so long is a blunder, perhaps; but 

 how much greater the tragedy when we recklessly 



52 



