FOR HKTTER CROPS 



127 



cows and other animals which provide milk can not do so in the 

 absence of liberal supplies of protein. This explains why good 

 clover hay is better adapted for milk production than good corn 

 stover. There is, of course, some protein in grasses and coarse 

 fodder, but there is not enough to supply the needs of the classes 

 of animals named. It must be supplied from some other source, 

 and there is no source of supply so cheap ordinarily as that which 

 furnishes protein by growing it on the farm. 



Kature does not furnish foods, nitrogenous in character, with 

 anything like the same abundance that it does foods that are 

 carbonaceous. All the grasses, many of which take possession of 

 the soil unaided as it were, are relatively low in protein as com- 

 pared with legumes. Mature covered the original prairies with 

 grasses, not legumes. When the forest is cut away, blue grass 



The hay tedder 



comes in and possesses the soil. Nature never covers the land 

 with legumes. The nearest approach to such a covering is found 

 in the more or less abundant growth of wild pea vines scattered 

 amid the native grasses, and particularly on lands more or less 

 covered with brush in the American and Canadian northwest. 



All the grains which grow in the north are non-leguminous, 

 except peas, vetches, and beans, and the same is true of those of 

 the south except cow peas, soy beans, and velvet beans. 



The only leguminous root crop, strictly speaking, that fur- 

 nishes food for live stock, is the peanut. All the coarse fodders, 

 as corn, sorghum, and the non-saccharine sorghums are non- 

 leguminous. True, flax in the north and cotton-seed meal in the 

 south are relatively rich in protein. So are the by-products of 

 wheat, as bran and shorts, but none of these is a legume. Where 

 live stock is to be kept, therefore, the need is imperative for grow- 

 ing a sufficiency of protein, and in no way can it be more cheaply 



