(39) 



culture, and this not only on account of its vigorous vitality, 

 but because it adapts itself to a great variety of soils. It is 

 widely diffused, and abounds in every part of Europe, in 

 North America, and even in Siberia. It furnishes an im- 

 mense amount of grazing, yields an abundance of nutritious 

 hay, and is a profitable crop, considered with reference to 

 the seed alone. But beyond all these, it acts as a vigorous 

 ameliorator of the soil, increasing more than any other 

 forage plant the amount of available nitrogen, and so be- 

 comes an important agent in keeping up the productive 

 capacity of the soil, and increasing the yield of o.ther crops. 



SOILS ADAPTED TO ITS GROWTH. 



Red clover is a biennial plai.t, and under judicious tillage 

 may be made a perennial, and is specially adapted to argil- 

 laceous soils, but it will grow well upon sandy soils, when 

 a "catch 7 ' is secured, by the application of a top-dressing of 

 gypsum or barn-yard manure. I have seen it growing with 

 vigor upon the feldspathic soils of Johnson county, upon 

 the sandstone soils of the Cumberland mountain, and upon 

 the sandy loams of West Tennessee, but it finds a more con- 

 genial soil in the clayey lands of the valley of East Ten- 

 uessee, on the red soils of the Highland Rim, and on the 

 limestone loams of the Central Basin. 



The clayey lands of West Tennessee have no superior for 

 the production of clover. It often grows upon these lands 

 from four to five feet in height, and forms a mat, when it 

 falls, of great density and thickness. As much as four tons 

 of clover hay have been taken from a single acre. Probably 

 three-fourths of the lands in Tennessee will grow clover re- 

 muneratively, and of the soils which will not, a large por- 

 tion is included in the old gullied fields that constitute the 

 shame and mark the thriftlessness of too many of the 

 farmers. It may be set down as an infallible rule in the 

 State of Tennessee that good farming and abundant clover- 

 ing go together. 



