HOW TO GROW GOOD CLOVER. 137 



CHAPTER, XXI. 



ON CLOVER SICKNESS. 



In considering the important question involved in 

 the term " Clover sickness," we would first direct 

 attention to the fact that crop clover is a derivative 

 plant which has been so forced that it is many times 

 larger and more juicy and succulent than the wild 

 plant from which it sprung. This derived nature 

 (the propensity, as it were, for fattening) can only be 

 maintained by a continuance from one generation to 

 another of those luxuries to which the cultivated 

 family has been accustomed ; hence, then, if seed be 

 brought from a richer soil to a poorer, or from a 

 warmer to a colder climate, we may expect that its 

 plants grown amid barley and drawn up during the 

 summer would have but a poor constitution to with- 

 stand the rigours of winter ; but can we in such a 

 case say that the land is clover-sick, that is, sick of 

 growing clover ? 



Of course the seed here supposed will grow better 

 in one place than in another, as, for example, we 

 have traced some American seed of broad-leaved 

 clover grown by itself in a deep rich soil in the Yale 

 of Gloucester, where the climate is so much milder 

 as to be a fortnight before the elevated land of the 

 Cotteswold Hills and producing an abundant crop ; 

 while the same forming part of a mixture of " seeds" 

 with rye-grass and plantain on the hills, the two latter 



