JOHNSON GRASS JAPAN CLOVEK. 125 



again the next season. Where the colder winters necessitate it, the 

 crop is grown in drills, and when the herbage is cut down a furrow 

 is thrown over the roots as a protection from the frost, the soil being 

 leveled down with the harrow in the spring. 



JOHNSON GRASS. 



This species is known as Sorghum hdapense, and is considered even 

 more valuable than the one above mentioned. It is a perennial, and 

 has long been the bugbear of the cotton planters, from the impossi- 

 bility of eradicating it when it once gets a foothold in the soiL For 

 a forage crop this is certainly a most excellent quality, especially 

 when combined with its nutritive and agreeable feeding qualities 

 and its abundant yield. The late Mr. Howard, of Atlanta, 

 Ga., a careful and practical farmer and investigator, said of it, after 

 an experience of forty years, that this grass was preferable to all 

 others that could be grown in the South. Its analysis shows it to be 

 more nutritious than even sweet corn fodder. Its seeds are as large 

 as those of broom corn, and its leaves are long and tender. The stem 

 reaches a height of six feet. Its perennial growth, and the firm hold 

 it takes of the soil, in which it spreads with great rapidity, give it a. 

 high value for a fodder grass in the South. 



JAPAN CLOVER. 



This humble but useful plant also deserves some notice xi^re. It 

 is an imported variety of Lespedeza, a trefoil allied to the Clovars. It 

 first appeared in 1849 near Charleston. The seeds are supposed to 

 have been brought from Japan or China in some tea boxes. It 

 rapidly spread into Georgia, where it was found soon after near 

 Macon. In 1870 it appeared in Tennessee and now spreads from the 

 Atlantic to the Mississippi. It is a low perennial plant, with a 

 spreading habit, much like that of White Clover. It flourishes on 

 the poorest soils, preventing washing by rains, and furnishing not 

 only good grazing, but fertilizing the soil by the decay of its stubble, 

 as Clover does, or by turning under as green manure. It is not a 

 hardy plant and will not thrive further north than Virginia. For a 

 sheep pasture it is scarcely excelled in value by any other forage plant. 



The following extract from a report made by Mr. William Saunders, 

 Superintendent of the grounds of the Agricultural Department, 

 Washington, D. C., made on the Soils and Products of Florida, in 

 compliance with an order from that Department made in 1883, will 

 be found interesting and valuable in regard to this subject: 



