BENEFIT OP CLOVER TO WHEAT SUCCEEDING. 259 



pens, has been given exclusively as top-dressing to the clover, which 

 is so much the more in favour of the succeeding wheat. 



The scientific and practical farmer as well as able- chemist, 

 Boussingault, has with great care ascertained the usual or average 

 quantities, and also the chemical contents, of the clover and all the 

 other crops of his rotation, so as to make certain the results which 

 with other persons would rest merely on supposition, or loose esti- 

 mates. On his farm, Bechelbronn in Alsace, he says "For a 

 long time a five years' rotation has there been adopted in the fol- 

 lowing order : 



1st year, Potatoes, or beet-root, manured. 



2d " Wheat, sown the autumn of the first year; clover in 

 the spring. 



3d " Clover, two crops [mown] ; the third ploughed in. 



4th " Wheat on the clover break; turnips after the wheat. 



5th Oats. 



It should be observed of this rotation that the first crop of wheat 

 was preceded by potatoes, a forerunner very favourable to the pro- 

 duct of the succeeding wheat; and still more so, as the potato 

 crop had all the manure of the farm. This crop of wheat, to the 

 acre, averaged 20 bushels and 31 Ibs. of grain; and of both straw 

 and grain 4029 Ibs. The clover following the next year yielded 

 2 crops of hay, making 4675 Ibs. dry (or in state of hay), and a 

 third crop, ploughed in for manure. It is the usage in Alsace to 

 mow clover very young, when it is just beginning to get in blossom ; 

 hence the two mowings must have been removed so early, as to 

 allow the third growth to be as heavy as each of the two first. 

 Counting it then as one-third of the whole, the year's product of 

 clover, if all had been made into hay, would have weighed (4675-f- 

 2337=) 7012 Ibs. ; of which one-third only was left on the land 

 as manure. After all this abstraction from the land, and also the 

 prepared manure having been applied to the first crop of the rota- 

 tion, the wheat following the clover yielded the average of 25 bush. 

 21 Ibs. of grain, and straw and grain together 4979 Ibs. 



This rotation is general in Alsace ; and speaking of general re- 

 sults, M. Boussingault says a The remarkable effect of clover [as 

 a manure crop] has not failed to arrest the attention of the most 

 un observing. The wheat crop which conies after our drill crop in 

 Alsace, beets or potatoes, averages from 18 to 20 bushels per acre ; 

 but the wheat succeeding clover averages from 23 to 24 bushels." 

 (p. 360.) 



There is another important subject for consideration and com- 

 parison of clover and other crops (not leguminous), in their relative 

 quantities of roots, stubble, or other residues, or offal parts, left on 

 the land. In the same year (1839), when the season was not pro- 

 pitious to either crop, the residues were taken by M. Boussingault 



