Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 433 



known as the " Yankees of Fairfax." Those of you who are old 

 enough to have observed the woeful condition of the slave la1)or 

 and tobacco-impoverished soil between Baltimore and Washington, 

 thirty years ago, and again recently, must have noticed and won- 

 dered at the change in many of the fields, which now are as fruitful 

 as the common run of lands. Well, clover and plaster — or guano 

 instead of the plaster, which is an excellent fertilizer wherewith to 

 start the more permanent clover on worn-out lands, and which only 

 wants a place to sow it on, for that end — yes, clover has done it 

 all, and in its magic touch alone is to be discovered the grand secret 

 of the marvelous change, as the present United States Commis- 

 sioner of Agriculture, Col. Capron, well knows, for he was one of 

 the noble associates of the late Samuel S. Sands, of the Maryland 

 Farmer, in the new era of agriculture in Maryland, and, indeed, on 

 the entire border. 



I have stated these facts in the hope of inducing such farmers as 

 have not employed clover, to do so, because I think it has no equal 

 as a fertilizer, only excepting stable manure, which, by making a 

 sure return to the soil of the constituents which have been taken 

 from it, is a never-failing source of fertility wherever applied with 

 judgment. 



When I think of the blessings vouchsafed by this wonderful 

 23lant — a native of the marble-ribbed soils of the Orient, and sung 

 of as among the pastoral glories of classic Greece and Rome, where 

 it grows still among the rocks from which their grand monuments 

 have been chiseled — I do not wonder that its introduction into Ger- 

 many, which took place only in the latter part of the last century 

 — won for the introducer of it there (John Christian Schubert), the 

 proud title of " Ritter von Kleefeld," (Knight of the Clover field), 

 which was bestowed upon him by the Emperor Joseph 11, as a 

 mark of imperial appreciation, and that not only was Schubert (all 

 honor to his name!) thus rewarded, but that silver dollars were 

 granted as premiums to all who imitated him by growing clover, 

 to be proudly worn around their necks, under the significant popu- 

 lar designation of " clover dollars." Nor do I wonder much that 

 Sercucius, the ancient Roman god of the dunghill, which was the 

 primitive representative of fertilizers, had altars erected to his wor- 

 ship in the various educational institutions of Germany in which 

 agriculture was a branch of study. And we may readily imagine 

 his modern worshippers to have repaired to these shrines with 

 their ofierings of new-mown hay, from whose myriad honey-freighted 

 [Inst.] 28 



