HOW TO GROW GOOD CLOVER. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



ON THE NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF THE CLOVER 

 FAMILY OF PLANTS. 



Clovers are admitted by all to be sucb important 

 adjuncts to the fodder plants of the farm as to render 

 a scientific and practical treatise upon them and their 

 allies a matter not only of interest, but of general 

 agricultural utility; for, if we except the grasses, 

 perhaps no natural order of plants is of greater value 

 to the farmer than that to which the clovers belong ; 

 for, though they differ in every point of their struc- 

 ture, yet in their farm products they offer an interest- 

 ing analogy. Thus, whilst in the Graminaceous plants 

 we have cereal or corn-seed products, and meadow and 

 pasture herbs, in the Leguminous plants we have a 

 seed-producing group termed pulse, and a herb- 

 growing green-food or fodder series. On either 

 hand, in both groups, there are differently-cultivated 

 forms ; for, while the grass-cereals are wholly the 

 result of arable culture, the fodder grasses are for the 

 most part grown under conditions distinguished by 

 the farmer as pasture. So of leguminous plants, 

 pulse, such as peas and beans, belongs exclusively to 

 the arable part of the farm ; but the fodder kinds, as 

 clover, either mix with the grass of the meadow, or 



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