CULTIVATION OF GRASSES. 213 



husbandly. These plants were not introduced into 

 British husbandry until the sixteenth century. Their 

 introduction among us, on any thing hke a general scale, 

 was far more recent. Indeed, lucerne has hardly yet ob- 

 tained a footing among us ; and a great many of our far- 

 mers are yet strangers to the great advantages which the 

 cultivation of the clovers imparts to farming operations. 



In Flanders, where husbandry underwent its earliest 

 improvements after the feudal age, and where it is found 

 now most to excel, the cultivation of clovers is deemed 

 indispensable to profitable farming. It forms a part of 

 the course in every system of rotation upon all soils that 

 will grow it. Upon their cultivation, says RadclifFe, 

 hinges apparently the whole of the farmer's prosperity. 

 " Without clover, no man in Flanders would pretend to 

 call himself a farmer." Clover is used there as it should 

 be used here — both to feed the animal and to enrich the 

 soil. In Great Britain, clovers are considered alike in- 

 dispensable to good farming, particularly upon sandy and 

 other light lands. Their general introduction into Amer- 

 ican husbandry promises higher advantages than have 

 been derived from them in Europe, inasmuch as gypsum, 

 which exerts a magic influence in their growth, produces 

 a more uniformly beneficial effect in the United States 

 than it does in Europe, excepting perhaps in the interior 

 of Germany. Those districts in our country in which 

 clover and plaster were first introduced, as some of the 

 counties in the valley of the Hudson, and on the eastern 

 border of Pennsylvania, have unquestionably made the 

 most rapid strides in agricultural improvement, and are 

 now confessedly, and by far, the best-cultivated districts 

 of our country. Those who have followed their exam- 

 ple, in whatever part of the country they have been loca- 

 ted, are realizing a rich reward for their intelligence and 

 enterprise. Several counties might be named, which 

 have doubled their agricultural products, and the profits 

 of their agricultural labor, since the introduction of clo- 

 vers and gypsum. No thorough-going farmer, we believe, 

 who has given thsm a fair experiment, has voluntarily 

 given them up. 



