138 HOW TO GROW GOOD CLOVER. 



have taken possession of the soil, and the clover made 

 no progress at all ; whilst other seed, under precisely 

 the same circumstances, has done remarkably well. 



That there is much reason for these conclusions 

 will he found in the fact that the more seed we 

 import from warmer climates the more difficult is it 

 found to make the land produce a plant; still 

 importation is rapidly on the increase, because 

 warmer climates can produce seed more certainly 

 and in greater quantity than we can at home. 



The difficulty of growing from foreign seed increases 

 in proportion to the thinness of the soil and the back- 

 wardness of the climate, so that the elevated districts 

 on the stony Cotteswolds just adverted to present, 

 perhaps, more of the so-called clover-sick land than 

 any other of like extent. 



The seed of clover, then, has become more and 

 more pampered — more the offspring of large crops 

 from deep alluvial soils under the tropical summer 

 heat of the south of Prance and the United 

 States, where it is grown as a self-crop and not fed 

 merely on what the corn could not carry away ; and 

 so while this enervation, or, if preferred, this civiliza- 

 tion, of plant has gone on, we expect its seed all at 

 once to withstand the shock of a lower temperature 

 with constant climatal changes and cutting winds ; 

 and if it does not succeed, we say that the land is 

 clover-sick, when, in truth, it is the seed that sickens 

 under these new and trying conditions. As well 

 may we say that the Northern States sicken of the 

 negro, because he there dies out so rapidly, or that 

 the warm south sickens of humanity, because those 

 who are unacclimated sicken and die there. 



Another circumstance which has contributed to an 



