Proceedings of tee Farmer^ Club. 429 



the land which furnished this noticeable " field of operation," was 

 •' fresh " — ^that is, newly cleared. But, at the same time, it had 

 no other manure but the clover, which sprung from that single 

 sowing with only a gallon of seed to the acre, ten years ago — and 

 all this, without doubt, having, for one of its profitable conditions, 

 such plentiful yields of wheat, corn, rye and oats, as blessed the 

 Shenandoah Valley for long years, ere the plowshare of war inter- 

 fered with the plowshare of peace, in obedience to the behests of 

 Mars rather than to those of Ceres, and. as it is beginning to do 

 again, without the risk of such another interruption of its peaceful 

 pm'suits in the coming years, let iis fondly hope and pray ! 



Now, it should be borne in mind, as another important conside- 

 ration of this fertilizer, that the years in which the above described 

 field lay in clover, it was not unproductive and useless aside from 

 the recuperative process which the clover's soil food was aiding it 

 to conduct. To the contrary, crop after crop of clover either 

 found its way into Mr. Henshaw's barn, in the shape of hay, to be 

 converted into draft power, milk and butter, or flesh food, or left 

 to contribute more dii'ectly to those ends, as the most delicious as 

 well as the most nuitritious pasturage that farm stock could be per- 

 mitted to have. And here let me say, that while it is admitted 

 not to be so good as feed for horses, in the working season of 

 farmers, as timothy, because of its containing less albuminous and 

 nitrogenous or muscle-producing constituents than that also most 

 valuable species of leguminous plant, while containing a much 

 larger percentage of heat-generating carbonic acid; but in the com- 

 paratively idle season of winter, it is equally as appropriate, while 

 more relished by them, as a continuous food. For horned cattle, 

 and especially for milch cows, it is always preferable as a hay. 

 Cows fed on timothy soon show a decreased activity of the milk 

 glands, because it "dries up the milk" in dairy phraseology. 

 Clover hay, on the other hand, to a great degree, though not so 

 plentifully as the sugar-coated and honey-laden, full blown green 

 clover, is an excellent milk-producing food. But not only so. 

 The richness of the milk from cows fed on clover hay, to say nothing 

 of its sweetness and general flavor, compared with milk from most 

 of other winter food, leaving the swill milk of our Metropolitan 

 stump tails out of consideration, is well known and duly apprecia- 

 ted by such as have had the good luck to encounter it in the clover 

 region to which this paper relates. The writer has memories of 

 it, running back to childhood, which, remembering the line of Pope, 



