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be allowed to run on it until the second year. Grasshoppers often eat 

 out the crown and destroy it. Dry weather in a stubble field where the 

 rays of the sun are reflected and repeated a thousand times from the 

 surface of the yellow stubble, is very trying to its vitality. Yet if the land 

 has been well and deeply broken and is moderately fertile, a sufficient 

 stand may be depended upon. 



As soon as the clover begins to grow, in early spring, an application 

 of two bushels of gypsum or land plaster, upon granitic or sandy soils, is 

 absolutely necessary to get a good growth. 



An application of gypsum is rarely beneficial upon clayey loams, but 

 its effects are very apparent on strong limestone soils, such as are found 

 in the Central Basin, where from t50 to 100 pounds per acre should be 

 sown upon clover. On the chocolate colored soils of Warren, Mont- 

 gomery, Stewart and Robertson counties, gypsum benefits clover very 

 little. Upon the soils of the Unaka and Cumberland mountains, it is 

 indispensable, to secure a remunerative yield of foliage. 



Mr. C. W. Johnston in a prize essay on the application of gypsum to 

 the artificial grasses, says that it should not be considered as a stimulant, 

 but as an essential food. "When the farmer finds that those fields which 

 once produced luxuriant crops of red clover, or sainfoin, will no longer 

 yield them in abundance; if he notices that the young plants spring up 

 very numerously, but die away as the summer advances; if he finds that 

 his fields will only grow clover successfully once in eight or twelve years, 

 and that his neighbors tell him his land is tired of clover, or "clover sick," 

 he may then safely conclude that his crops have gradually exhausted his 

 land of sulphate of lime; and he may, with every confidence of success, 

 apply a dressing of gypsum by scattering it evenly over the ground on the 

 clover plants at the rate of 200 pounds per acre, taking care to choose a 

 wet morning for the application; and this may be done at any season of 

 the year, but it is best either in April or the first days of May." In Ten- 

 nessee gypsum should be sown in the spring as soon as the clover begins 

 to grow, and again the following spring. 



Mr. Smith, of Highstead, England, states that he found the greatest 

 benefit from the use of gypsum to his clover leys; for where the simple 

 soil produced one ton only per acre of hay, the portion of the same soil 

 to which five bushels per acre of gypsum had been applied, yielded three 

 tons the first only yielding 20 pounds of seed while the latter produced 

 105 pounds. Mr. Smith, too. first noticed what observation has since 

 confirmed that cattle, horses, etc., always prefer the clover growing on 

 the portion of the field that had received an application of gypsum to any 

 other. The same remark is made by those who spread coal ashes, which 

 contain a considerable quantity of this earth, on their grass leys. 



Red clover, the second year, has two growing seasons. It makes its 

 most vigorous growth from the first of April until the 15th of June, be- 

 ginning to bloom usually in the latitude of Tennessee about the 15th 

 of May, and attaining its full inflorescence about the first of June. After 

 this, unless pastured by stock or cut for hay, the heads begin to dry up, 

 and stems and leaves begin to fall, forming a mat upon the land. Some- 

 times this mat is so thick as to catch and concentrate the heat of the sun 



