202 AZOTE SUPPLIED THROUGH PEA CROPS. 



it may be safely inferred, from its being a legume, from its luxuri- 

 ance of growth, and also from all of the little careful observation 

 that has been yet directed to it, that our native southern pea or 

 bean is a fertilizer of great value, and whose value in this respect is 

 just beginning to be understood. My own experience of this plant, 

 in field culture, is but a few years old. But it has been so encourag- 

 ing in the results, that I have already extended this growth, so as to 

 make it occupy an entire field, and to make an important part of 

 my rotation. It is too soon yet to rely on such recent facts and 

 observations. But so far as tested by my experience, I have every 

 reason to value highly this as a manuring crop, and especially as a 

 preparatory crop for wheat.* 



If this plant was not an annual, and requiring (when sown sepa- 

 rately as a fallow or manure crop) to have the land ploughed for 

 its seeding, it would be more valuable than clover. This defect is 

 however in one aspect an advantage , as we can raise the crop in 

 three or four months from the seeding, to the state of full growth 

 fit for ploughing under, with more certainty of success, both in the 

 standing and producing, than with clover in sixteen months from 

 the sowing. Farther south, the growth and production of the bean 

 crop becomes better, in proportion as clover becomes more precari- 

 ous and generally unproductive. 



In the preceding pages I have endeavoured to explain and to 

 establish these opinions : 



1. That azote, the smallest but richest, and for its quantity by 

 far the most important element and ingredient of plants, is derived 

 by most plants exclusively from the soil ; 



2. That plants of the leguminous tribe, and they alone, so far as 

 known, possess and exert the power also to draw azote directly from 

 the atmosp^pre, assimilate and fix in their bodies this richest ma- 

 terial, and to give it as manure to the soil on which they grow, and 

 are left to decay; 



3. That owing to this peculiar power, leguminous plants are the 

 most highly enriching to soil, as manure. 



pods, than to any known pea. But unlike the vetch, it is not a vine, but 

 a shrub. 



* The varieties of these beans are innumerable. The most common and 

 best known as an excellent table vegetable, is the " black-eyed pea," of 

 which the seed is white with a black spot around the eye or germ. This 

 name, made doubly incorrect, is extended in common parlance, and in lists 

 of prices-current, to all the varieties of this crop, and seeds of various 

 colours. All the white kinds are the least valuable for green manuring 

 crops, because producing least vine and leaf. The greatest " runners," or 

 producers of vines, and making the heaviest cover to the ground, are all late 

 peas, and either black, red, or pale buff colour. There are many varieties, 

 with differences of time and manner of growth, even of these colours ; and 

 the seeds of one colour not distinguishable from other kinds of like colour. 



