122 TALKS ON MANURES. 



ceivcd a particle of manure, produces every year an average of 

 about 15 bushels per acre. And the whole crop is removed grain, 

 straw, and chaff. Nothing is returned. And that the land is not 

 remarkably rich, is evident from the fact that some of the farms in 

 the neighborhood, produce, under the ordinary system of manage- 

 ment, but little more wheat, once in four or five years than is 

 raised every year on this experimental plot without any manure. 



Why? Because these farmers do not half work their land, and 

 the manure they make is little better than rotten straw. Mr. Lawes' 

 wheat-field is plowed twice every year, and when I was there, the 

 crop was hand-hoed two or three times in the spring. Not a weed 

 is suffered to grow. And this is all there is to it. 



Now, of course, instead of raising 15 bushels of wheat every year, 

 it is a good deal better to raise a crop of 30 bushels every other 

 year, and still better to raise 45 bushels every third year. And it 

 is here that clover comes to our aid. It will enable us to do this 

 very thing, and the land runs no greater risk of exhaustion than 

 Mr. Lawcs' unrnanured wheat crop. 



Mr. Geddes and I do not differ as much as you suppose. In fact, 

 I do not believe that we differ at all. He has for years been an 

 earnest advocate for growing clover as a renovating crop. He 

 thinks it by far the cheapest manure that can be obtained in this 

 section. I agree with him most fully in all these particulars. He 

 formed his opinion from experience and observation. I derived 

 mine from the Rothamstecl experiments. And the more I see of 

 practical farming, the more am I satisfied of their truth. Clover 

 is, unquestionably, the great renovating crop of American agricul- 

 ture. A crop of clover, equal to two tons of hay, when plowed 

 under, will furnish more ammonia to the soil than twenty tons of 

 straw-made manure, drawn out fresh and wet in the spring, or 

 than twelve tons of our ordinary barn-yard manure. No wonder 

 Mr. Geddes and other intelligent farmers recommend plowing 

 under clover as manure. I differ from them in no respect except 

 this : that it is not absolutely essential to plow clover under in the 

 green state in order to get its fertilizing effect ; but, if made into 

 hay, and this hay is fed to animals, and all the manure carefully 

 saved, and returned to the land, there need be comparatively little 

 loss. The animals will seldom take out more than from five to 

 ten per cent of all the nitrogen furnished in the food and less still 

 of mineral matter. I advocate growing all the clover you possibly 

 can so does Mr. Geddes. He says, plow it under for manure. So 

 ga y I unless you can make more from feeding out the 



