112 THE CLOVER CROP. 



sion at the Central Farmers' Club (Nov. 1859), and in the 

 agricultural journals, as to the preventive precautions to 

 be taken, or the best substitutes for the clover plant in 

 our farming rotations. 



Although these discussions produced no direct results as 

 to the cause of the disease, they have been the means of 

 calling the attention of scientific as well as practical men to 

 the subject, and of pointing out the direction in which our 

 observations should be directed. A few years back we were 

 inclined to trace many of the various unaccountable effects 

 in farming to chemical causes, and sought, by analysis of our 

 soils, &c., to arrive at their defects, and thus readily pro- 

 vide compensating remedies for them. Vital effects, how- 

 ever, are clearly not to be judged by chemistry alone. Each 

 plant we cultivate probably differs in its nature and 

 powers from the others, and is influenced for good or for 

 bad by entirely different causes. ' ' If the analysis of plants 

 alone could tell us precisely what has been withdrawn by 

 a given crop from the soil, and what must be restored to 

 it to insure success, agriculture would become in a great 

 measure a matter of certainty, instead of being subject to 

 a thousand accidents, as it is. That the farmer may and 

 does derive great advantage from his own chemical know- 

 ledge or that of others, it would be folly to deny; but he 

 must not suppose that all begins and ends there. There 

 are mysteries far beyond the reach of the highest human 

 knowledge; but the veil is sometimes capable of being 

 withdrawn, yet only where people do not rest satisfied 

 with a foregone conclusion, but are content to keep their 

 minds open to fresh suggestions, without indolently making 

 up their bundle of faggots, and wrapping themselves up 

 in their own prejudices." The investigation into the com- 

 position of soils on which Red clover succeeds and fails, 

 by Dr. Anderson, 1 clearly shows that we must seek else- 

 where for the cause of the disease, and fully justifies 

 1 High. Soc. Trans., 1849, p. 202. 



