and its Economic Management. 77- 



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 eat 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 

 irrigation systems ; but in this country, no matter how- 

 it is treated, nor how fine the weather may be, bees rarely 

 visit it, and then only in late Autumn in very small 

 numbers, when most other plants have ceased to yield. 

 This is unfortunate, as there is no forage plant which, 

 grows so luxuriantly, or recovers from cutting so quickly 

 as lucerne ; it may also remain on the same ground for 



