The Clover Mystery. 191 



I need hardly add, are the indispensable base of all economical and 

 successful agriculture where the leguminosae can be grown, and not only 

 for the food supplied for stock, but for the physical and manurial effects 

 provided for the use of the future crops of the rotation. To sum up — 

 if you can grow clover you can grow grass, and if you can grow grass 

 you can, with the aid of deep-rooting and drought-resisting plants, 

 grow in four years a turf which is manure for four crops without any 

 added manure, either by feeding cake on the land or artificials, except, 

 perhaps, a small quantity of the latter for the turnip and swede crops ; 

 and these I hope entirely to abolish next year, as I have found, by 

 experiments, that after ploughing up a second turf none are required. 

 Nor are they in the case of potatoes. On comparing my yield last 

 year with that of the Balderston Farm experiments near Linlithgow, 

 where 20 tons of dung and 7i cwt. of artificials were used, I not only, 

 with the aid of a good turf, beat the experiments as to amount of 

 production, .but showed a much larger profit, as I used neither dung 

 nor artificials. In this connection it is important to note the following, 

 as growing potatoes, with the use of turf alone as manure, seems to 

 have an important effect not only as to production, but also as to 

 superiority of eating-quality of the potatoes, and especially with 

 reference to potato disease. The variety I used was the Uj>-to-Date, 

 and it produced 13 tons 14 cwt. per acre, and there were practically 

 no diseased potatoes, only an occasional one such as, I am told, is 

 commonly seen in all cases. In the case of the same variety the 

 Balderston experiments gave 10 tons 18 cwt. 6 lb., and no less than 

 7 cwt. 2 lb. of diseased potatoes. 



It is of practical interest to note the steps taken by our predecessors 

 in Scotland to maintain the humus of the soil by dividing farms ihto 

 infield and outfield, and guarding the latter from exhaustion, as the 

 amount of farmyard manure available could of course uo more main- 

 tain the necessary amount of humus then than it can now. So far as 

 I can judge from the leases of my property of 1782, the outfield was 

 only to be ploughed once at the beginning of a lease, after which it 

 was to lie three years in grass (or four years from sowing the seed, as 

 in Scotland they do not count the first year). If ploughed again a 

 certain course of cropping was prescribed, after which the land was to 

 lie iu grass till the end of the lease. When, however, artificial 

 manures came in, such restrictions were abandoned, and field after 

 field of the outfield was added to the infield till all was absorbed, and 

 kept on a system which steadily exhausted the humus of the land. 

 And this circumstance has of course been largely aggravated by the 

 failure of the clover crop— sometimes entire and sometimes partial, as 

 we have seen — for is it not obvious, from what I have previously said, 

 that the failure of the humus limits the clover crop, and that, in turn, 

 the failure of the latter limits the supply of the former? In this 

 connection I may call attention to a letter over the signature of " Blue 

 Book," which appeared in The Times of August 10th, which shows, by 

 a reference to agricultural conditions and prices in Prance, that to 

 provide cheap food you must have soil fertilized with humus, the 



