HOW TO GUOW GOOD CLOVER. 143 



would fain be considered as fond of sport because 

 his " den," perchance, contains a stuffed owl, hawk, 

 magpie, or some other specimen. 



On a recent visit to Dorsetshire, on our own farm, 

 we saw a man employed to "keep the birds" from 

 a field where several labourers were engaged barley 

 sowing; and it is quite true that, unless he had been 

 there, the rooks would have as industriously followed 

 the drill as they do the plough ; but, as we thought, 

 scarcely to pick up barley in the breeding season, 

 when there was metal more attractive in the recently- 

 hatched Mater ohscurus, parent of the wireworm, 

 which were thicker than we ever saw them before, 

 and, doubtless, the disturbance of the soil brought 

 these and two or three generations of wireworms 

 to the surface. Now, we do not hesitate to give as 

 our opinion that this birdkeeper would have done 

 more good to the barley and the succeeding clover 

 crop by picking up a hundred or two of these beetles 

 and destroying them than by blazing away at rooks 

 for a twelvemonth, and this certainly might have 

 been done in an hour or two. 



Still, that some soils do get incapable of growing 

 a clover crop is pretty certain ; and it may, we think, 

 be equally settled that this does not entirely depend 

 upon their having been exhausted of the ingredients 

 which analysis demonstrates clover to contain, for 

 we certainly have seen clover succeed after the 

 burning of so-called clover-sick land ; and though 

 there is reason to think that this result was partially 

 due to the setting free of a fresh supply of manurial 

 ingredients, we are still convinced that the burning 

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