ROTATION OF CROPS. 211 



of rotation. This rotation is eminently successful, and, in the opinion of many farmers, it is 

 one which will never exhaust the soil, inasmuch as it is maintained that clover constantly takes 

 from the atmosphere its organic matter at least. There are, however, considerations which go 

 to di-iprove this view of the subject. We can not, for a moment, believe that clover can take 

 any thing from the atmosphere but carbonic acid ; and hence clover can not enrich a soil beyond 

 the amount which it thus derives from a foreign source. Carbonaceous or organic matter, then, 

 is the only class of substances which can be added to the soil : clover can not enrich a soil, 

 except in this particular. In every crop of wheat, however, between twenty-five and thirty 

 pounds of expensive material will be carried off annually, in the grain alone, and which the 

 clover and plaster can not restore. 



How then are we to explain the influence of clover as manure for the wheat crop 1 Clover 

 is a voracious plant ; it is very vigorous and rapid in its growth ; it sends out roots in a great 

 abundance, in all directions, and which penetrate deeply, as well as widely. The consequence 

 is, that it stores up a great abundance of food in its roots, stems, leaves and heads. The plants 

 have explored a wide territory, and brought to the surface a great amount of nutriment for 

 wheat. Now, although the opinion is quite common that clover is not an exhausting crop, yet 

 if the analysis of the plant is consulted, it will appear that it is really one of the most exhausting 

 of all crops, provided the whole plant was removed from the soil. But its large root, rich in 

 expensive ehments, must remain to decay in the soil, and yields its rich stores to the wheat 

 plant which is to follow. The clover plant is, then, more like the commissary; it does not 

 create, but collects, and its ability for collecting, even in poor soils, is remarkably, great : it 

 adds nothing to the soil really and essentially important to the wheat plant, but it brings up 

 from the depths below, and opens passages for the root of the wheat to penetrate. 



Again, the soils of Nqw-York are rich, and the wheat region, as I have often had occasion 

 to remark, is based upon a decomposable rock, which is constantly adding to the soil its debris, 

 and which is new and freshly charged with much nutrimcntal matter ; and so it happens that 

 years may pass, and the fields may produce large crops, and yet they remain fertile, and have 

 not, apparently, lost their productiveness. But many of those rich fields, after thirty years of 

 culture, begin to show the fact, that some of the essential elements of the cereals have become 

 diminished ; and the farmers who once regarded the stable manures as a nuisance, now find it 

 necessary to spread it on their fields. It is, then, only a slow exhaustion from a rich store 

 bouse, which the father, in his life time, may not perceive, but which the son, in his husbandry, 

 must both see and feel. A fact then, so susceptible of proof when duly considered, should not 

 be lost sight of; and, although many farmers have sustained losses by adopting a fallacious 

 opinion, as it respects exhaustion, it is not too early to change their views, and adopt practices 

 which shall obviate, in a measure, the injurious results which will necessarily follow from the 

 present system of culture. Clover, instead of taking nutriment from the atmosphere for the 

 wheat or corn plant, gathers its essential elements from the soil in which its roots have pene- 

 trated, and which too, by their powerful growth, can push themselves where the wheat root 

 can not until a way is opened for it. The clover plant, when cut for hay, will remove from 



