150 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



"scrub " bacteria grown in the fields ; but tliat is a claim that 

 has never been proved anywhere. Mother Nature's bacteria 

 are all right, and there is enough of them everywhere. 



I would like to hear from any farmers present touching 

 clover. The speaker has said alsike clover is longer-lived 

 than red clover. In Amherst it is precisely the opposite ; 

 red clover persists longer than the alsike when we sow both, 

 and also gives more rowen. There is no doubt a reason why 

 these two plants behave so ditt'erently in the two localities ; 

 perhaps the reason will come out, as the result of my re- 

 marks. I should like to hear from any farmer, who is in the 

 habit of sowing the two kinds of clover, as to his experience. 



Question. Why will the alsike come into a meadow 

 without any sowing of the seed ? 



Professor Brooks. Because the seeds are there, and be- 

 cause the conditions have been made right. One may be 

 inclined to question that the seeds are there, or may not 

 understand how they can be there ; but it is known gener- 

 ally, of course, that many of our seeds are capable of retain- 

 ing vitality for very long periods when buried in the soil. 

 Clover is peculiar in that respect ; it seems to have been 

 designed by nature to do precisely that thing ; and a very 

 brief statement of a personal experience in Germany may 

 interest you. I visited, among other places, the principal 

 experiment station in the world for testing seeds, and was 

 shown about by old Professor Nobbe, the pioneer in work 

 of that sort. He took me to a big case and showed me a lot 

 of little vials of water, and in the water were little, yellow- 

 ish seeds. He said they were clover. He added : " When 

 I began to test seeds for farmers, I found a good many clover 

 seeds didn't grow ; they looked all right, and I wondered 

 why they didn't grow, so I cut them open and looked at 

 them ; they were all right, the meat was there, the germ was 

 there, and still they didn't grow. For some time I couldn't 

 understand, but after a while I found out that the seed coat 

 of the clover is in a good many cases prepared by nature to 

 resist the taking up of water ; it is made waterproof." He 

 said : ' ' You see those clover seeds in those little vials ; 

 some of them have been there twenty years ; some of them 



