LAWS OF VEGETATION. 79 



On the same principle, and witli the same care, we should 

 treat the cabbage, the turnip and the beet. Burn your potato 

 tops and pumpkin vines ? No ; raise crops on purpose to turn 

 under the soil, without the smell of fire having passed over 

 them. Your clover has spread its leaves to the wind, and 

 taken in carbon and nitrogen ; it' has thrust it roots down into 

 the subsoil and taken up the soluble salts which the other 

 plants had not reached ; it has organized these mineral elements, 

 and when you turn it under the turf and plant your corn, the 

 corn has abundance of nutriment ready prepared for its use. 

 Wherever you can get a crop of clover you may get a crop of 

 corn. If you have nothing but a sand bank, put on guano or 

 something to make your seed catch and stimulate the plant, 

 and every thing that is in the soil,, and in the air, and in the 

 rain, will be brought into the crop. Turn it iu, and you have 

 logt nothing but gained much. Now a crop of grain will grow 

 without guano. But cart off the green crops and you have lost 

 the few essential materials which the plant extracted under 

 stimulus. Even that powerful stimulant, guano, cannot pro- 

 duce a crop after a few repetitions. 



It is a " penny wise and pound foolish" policy that cannot 

 afford to turn in the green crop when it is grown, and will end 

 like all such policies, in- bankruptcy — bankruptcy of the soil, 

 and bankruptcy of the purse. I know of no so obvious and 

 valuable means of fertilizing worn out or naturally barren lands, 

 which the people in this vicinity so much neglect, as the turn- 

 ing in of green crops. Nature always proceeds in this way, 

 why should not we ? Throw up the barren subsoil to the sur- 

 face, the spores of lichens floating in the air lodge upon it, the 

 plant springs up and lives upon air and water, it throws out its 

 spores in a circle around its position and dies, bequeathing the 

 organized matter to the barren soil. In this centre the seeds 

 of grasses which demand organic matter in the soil, spring up 

 and grow, and around, the new spores also spring up to enlarge 

 the circle of fertility, and this continues till the barren clay 

 and sand is covered with a handsome green turf. The old, 

 worn out tobacco lands of Virginia are being completely reno- 

 vated by green crops. Thousands of acres that were once 

 fertile estates have been for years covered with old land pines. 

 They were desolate, barren, of little value. It was found that 



