tag a human being as bad and thus make him so. 

 And are we not doing this all the time? 



Perhaps in the last analysis there are no really 

 noxious plants nor bad people. 



SWEET CLOVER IN ILLINOIS. 



Last year, in an article headed "Sweet Clover," I. 

 A. Thayer suggests that land might be inoculated for 

 alfalfa by the previous production of a crop of sweet 

 clover, because of the fact that the sweet clover bac- 

 teria appear to be identical with the alfalfa bacteria. 

 I beg to call attention to the fact that land which 

 needs to be inoculated for alfalfa also needs to be 

 inoculated for sweet clover. On the ordinary prairie 

 soil in Illinois we have more than doubled the yield 

 of sweet clover by proper inoculation, and the inocu- 

 lated crop is also very much richer in nitrogen than 

 that grown without inoculation. It should be re- 

 membered that the natural means by which sweet 

 clover becomes disseminated will commonly provide 

 for the dissemination of infected soil as well as for 

 the dissemination of the seed. Thus, if sweet clover 

 is growing along the roadside and some seeds are 

 picked up by a wagon wheel and dropped off a mile 

 or two farther on, the infected soil is likely to be 

 carried with the seed. If the seed is carried by 

 running water from one place to another, of course, 

 the bacteria are likely to be carried with it. 



University of Illinois. CYEIL G. HOPKINS. 



SWEET CLOVER, MELILOTUS ALBA. 



This plant has interested me for several years. In 

 this vicinity are large patches of it, and I have 

 been studying it in its growth, its nitrogen content, 

 and its bacteria. In places along railroad fills of slag 

 cinder, banks of gravel, dumping-grounds around 

 lime-stone quarries, and in excavations where it would 

 be thought there could be no fertility, and in almost 

 any place where seed had lodged, except on sour clay, 

 I have seen it growing as thriftily as any other plant 

 on the most favorable soil; and in many of these 

 places the ground was so poor that not another green 



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