GRASSES AND CLOVER. 119 



about 450,000,000 bushels, and worth on an average the same 

 number of dollars, and the annual corn crop at forty cents per 

 bushel would bring about $700,000,000. 



In getting at the relative values of these different crops it 

 must be remembered that the expense of each acre of corn, or 

 wheat, for plowing, harrowing, seed, and harvesting, will on an 

 average amount to nearly or quite half the value of the crops. 

 Grass, however, being usually sown with small grain, requires 

 no special preparation of soil, and as a single seeding lasts from 

 two to an indefinite number of years, the expense to be 

 charged to the crop amounts to a very small per cent of its 

 value. 



That a system of farming which keeps a large per cent of 

 the land in grass will, under right management improve the soil, 

 scarcely needs an argument, for every farmer knows ; first, that 

 continual cropping in grain always reduces the fertility of the 

 soil, and, second, that the cheapest plant food at the farmer's 

 command is a decaying sod. A proper proportion of grass on 

 the farm enables us to follow a wise rotation of crops, and to 

 grow stock to consume the grain, straw, and fodder, and thus 

 produce the manure which is indispensable to good farming. 



Farms which on account of a rolling surface, and the quality 

 of the soil would soon be ruined by washing if cultivated in 

 grain, can be kept in good condition by keeping them seeded to 

 grass. I have seen this illustrated along the " Big Miami 

 River." For some twenty miles above its mouth the bluffs will 

 average about three hundred feet high, and on the farms whose 

 owners have persisted in cultivating them these hill-sides are 

 now barren, seamed, and gullied, so that they can never produce 

 grain again; and even to get them set in grass will require the 

 planting of trees and building of dams in the washes, and will 

 be a work requiring long time and great labor, and even then the 

 grass product of these hill-sides will be small compared with 

 those which have been kept in grass and thus saved from this 

 loss. Often on the adjoining farm will be seen hill-sides just as 

 steep, clothed from base to summit with a velvety sward of blue 

 grass, which starts into rapid growth with the first warm days of 



