and its Economic Management. 89 
The second crop was all that could be desired as a plant 
for hay, but being late and rather too thin, the cows again 
had the benefit of it, as soon as the blossoms were of no 
further use to the bees. The plant is useful for improving 
the land, and even if not ploughed under, the great roots 
rotting after the second year, and opening up the soil to 
a great depth, must be of vast service to following crops, 
as I have certainly found to be the case with this particular 
field. 
At the Illinois State Bee-Keepers’ Convention, held at 
Chicago, January 9th, 1896, Mr. Baldridge read a very 
interesting letter he had received from a farmer in 
Mississippi, who had grown 100 acres of sweet clover for 
pasturage of cattle and for hay. He had at the time 150 
tons of sweet clover hay, and found that both his horses 
and cattle ate it as readily as that from the red variety. 
The same farmer said: “I have kept this season 55 head 
of stock on 50 acres of sweet clover as pasturage, and 
besides I have cut and saved from it 50 tons of hay. 
My stock had all the pasture from the sweet clover they 
could eat, and they are now very sleek and fat. The 
plant makes such a rapid growth that the stock and 
mowing-machine could not keep it back. Of course, if I 
were to go into the field and cut the sweet clover all down 
at once, I might then use it up, but I simply cut small 
plots at a time, so as to let the stock graze all the time. 
The first year’s growth of sweet clover is the finest 
grazing-plant to fatten stock of any kind that I ever saw, 
and especially late in the fall, when all other plants are 
gone.” 
The Queen of Forage Plants 
_is undoubtedly Lucerne ; and in many of the great plains 
of America it is known to yield tons of honey under 
