THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



cooling the earth, attracts whatever is 

 soluble in the atmosphere. 



Now, why does sweet clover prefer lime 

 lands ? Because lime is an alkali earth 

 and contains a superabundance of phos- 

 phate of lime. Then, to make a perfect 

 soil, nothing is needed but nitric acid; 

 which our scientific men, with one accord, 

 now agree is gathered from the atmosphere 

 in abundance by leguminous plants; such 

 as peas, beans, sweet clover, alfalfa, the 

 other clovers, etc. 



A few years ago scientific men told us 

 that these plants collected this free ni- 

 trogen through the pores in the leaves; 

 but now they tell us that this free nitro- 

 gen is converted into nitrates, or plant 

 food, by microbes, bacteria or insect life. 

 One is as absurd as the other; and either 

 is worse than the moon-signs, or hollow- 

 horn theory they make so much fun of. 



Now, if it were possible for sweet clo- 

 ver and other legumes to take in these 

 elements through the leaves it would be 

 impossible for them to depart and get in- 

 to the earth until the plant dies; because 

 nothing ever passes from a living plant 

 back into the earth through the roots un- 

 less the latter are cut or broken. Then 

 if we remove the plant from the soil we 

 take all the gathered nitrogen with it. It 

 can not come from the decaying roots, 

 for these shade or leguminous plants 

 have fewer roots than the non-shade 

 plants. We know that sorghum has many 

 times more roots than cowpeas; corn more 

 roots than cotton; and millet more roots 

 than clover; and yet, these shade crops 

 gather nitrogen, whereas the non-shade 

 crops exhaust the nitrogen with their 

 great mass of roots. 



Again, these same scientific men tell us 

 that the roots of leguminous plants have 

 the power to crush stones and bones con- 

 taining alkali or phosphate; when the 

 truth is, that the shade therefrom gath- 

 ers the moisture and acids from the at- 

 mosphere; and these dissolve the bones 

 or rocks and form the alkalis and the 

 phosphatic acids into nitrates and phos- 

 phates. This loosens the soil and cau.ses 



it to become dark and fertile thus ena- 

 bling the roots to penetrate the soil and 

 push up thiifty plants. 



Scientific men also tell us that all lime 

 is the petrified remains of salt water ani- 

 mals. The phosphate rock comes from 

 the same source. The phosphoric acid in 

 these rocks or bones is made soluble by 

 treatment with sulphuric acid. Nitric 

 acid produces the same effect; and this 

 can be produced by shading the soil with 

 sweet clover or other leguminous plants. 



Cotton seed contains a large amount of 

 nitric acid. Years ago some hogs died in 

 Texas with cholera; and the owner buried 

 them in a large pile of cotton seed. After 

 a few weeks had gone bj-he found, on ex- 

 amination, that the hogs were entirely 

 eaten up, bones and all; the only excep- 

 tion being the vegetable matter found in 

 the intestines. The bones looked like 

 meal. Since then he has collected all the 

 bones he could and buried them in cotton 

 seed kept moist with water. In this way 

 he has made his cotton seed net him 23 

 cents per bushel. Now if the nitric acid 

 in cotton seed will dissolve bones .so per- 

 fectly it will surely also dissolve lime 

 rock. And the nitrogen in the atmos- 

 phere, converted into nitrates by com- 

 bining with the mineral elements in the 

 soil, will liHve the same effect as the nitro- 

 gen in the cotton seed. And there is no 

 doubt that this is collected by the dense 

 shading of the soil with sweet clover and 

 other leguminous plants. 



The following was written in December, 

 1896, by one of my sweet clover corres- 

 pondents in eastern Missis-sippi. The 

 writer, Edwin Montgomery is an ex-edi- 

 widely known writer on Southern agricul- 

 tor of an agricultural periodical and is a 

 tural topics. He says: — 



"I have now growing on my farm from 

 15 to 20 acres of sweei clover, or melilo- 

 tus. The plant is doing well, and stock 

 are getting a good bite from it to-day, 

 December 14. I shall sow more in Feb- 

 virary, as this is probably the best month 

 in which to sow sweet clover in this sec- 

 tion, My neighbor who wrote you that 



