SPECIES CULTIVATED. 151 



confined to the Luplnus albus white lupine. In 

 a recent paper 1 on the cultivation of the lupine, we find 

 that in Prussia the blue and the yellow species L. 

 angustifollus and L. luteus are preferred to the white, 

 ancl that various other species are being experimented 

 with. The two species mentioned are thus described: 

 "The yellow lupine has yellow flowers; the whole plant 

 is more succulent, with more and larger leaves, and with 

 a softer stem; the seeds are smaller, and of a lighter 

 yellowish colour, with darker speckles. The blue lupine 

 has blue flowers; the plant is stiffer and harsher; the 

 leaves smaller, and not so plentiful ; the seeds somewhat 

 larger, and of darker colour. Both plants have nearly 

 the same conditions of vegetation. What makes them 

 important for agriculture is their growing luxuriantly 

 on light, poor, sandy soils, in situations where no other 

 of our leguminous plants could live. We have some 

 districts, in the northern parts of Germany and Prussia, 

 where a miserable crop of rye was nearly the only pro- 

 duction, and where even buckwheat would fail in dry 

 seasons; and it is in such situations that farming has 

 become profitable by the cultivation of lupines, and where, 

 in consequence, the rents have been much more than 

 doubled/' 



The practice on such lands appears to be to sow the 

 lupines pretty thick about May or June, either broad- 

 cast or with the drill, and, directly they come into flower, 

 to roll them down, plough them in as quickly as possible, 

 so as to preserve their moisture, and then to sow a corn 

 crop at the usual period, by which time the green manure 

 would have passed through its stages of fermentation, and 

 decomposition have been fairly set up. If the condition 

 of the land does not necessitate this treatment, sacrificing, 

 as it does, the entire forage value of the crop, the sowing 



1 Roy. Agri. Soc. Journal, vol. xx. p. 100. 



