104 PRACTICAL NOTES ON GRASSES AND GRASS GROWING. 
which is often overlooked, although its presence in the sample 
is easy to detect if care is taken. 
White clover seed, when once ripened, will keep good. for 
years if the air is kept from it. It will not germinate well if 
deeply buried, and many are the instances recorded where 
seeds, which have laid dormant in the land for a considerable 
period, have taken root and flourished in an extraordinary 
manner when the land has been again disturbed. 
Although of a spreading, creeping nature, the white clover 
plant has a tap-root. It starts growing late in the spring, and 
makes the greatest headway during moist warm weather ; often 
it spreads to such an extent as to become a nuisance. Being 
a very hardy plant, it will sometimes thrive where almost all 
other grasses fail, and for this reason, if for no other, it is a 
valuable plant, and can be included with advantage in any 
mixture and on any land, either for permanent pasture, or 
for one or more year’s ley; but the land most suitable to 
it should contain marl, gravel, or gravelly clay. 
Not arriving at maturity until late in the season, it is unsuited 
for hay; it is distinctly an autumn and summer grazing plant. 
Stock are fairly fond of it before the head (white in colour, 
coming at the end of a stalk devoid of leaves) has fully 
developed, when they seem to prefer other grasses; but it is 
highly nutritious, and is valuable for its creeping propensities, 
as it covers the ground and forms a good flag to plough in, for 
which purpose alone it well repays the outlay of 2 lb. to 4 Ib. 
of seed peracre. 20 1b. per acre is the full complement. It 
weighs about 66 Ib. per bushel, each pound containing upwards 
of 700,000 germinating seeds, 
TRIFOLIUM (TRIFOLIUM INCARNATUM AND ALBA). 
There appears to be but one genuine species of this. plant, 
although the four sports therefrom are used in alternate 
