254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



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In grain farming, only grain or seed should be sold from the farm, 

 all clover, straw and stalks being returned to the land in order to main- 

 tain the supply of organic matter and nitrogen, which are just as im- 

 portant as limestone and phosphorus; 3 and in live-stock farming all 

 produce should be used for feed and bedding and all manure carefully 

 saved and returned to the land, preferably within a day or two after it is 

 produced, in order to prevent the waste of plant food." 



" Now, do you understand all this ? " asked the old Doctor. 



" I don't," replied King Corn. 



" And I don't," added Queen Clover, " but I have faith in Doctor 

 Science, and I think we should follow his prescription. I know very 

 well that I can't do as much as has been expected of me in the past. I 

 can't make food out of nothing, and the king can't live on just air and 

 water ; and the soil is becoming so worn and hard that I can't even make 

 a good bed for him, especially when I'm half starved myself most of the 

 time." 



King Corn agreed to this. He had long supposed that Queen Clover 

 could get from the soil and % air all of the food they would ever need, but 

 be now remembered how he himself had failed in this as a bachelor, and 

 he felt that Clover had been such a good queen that anything which 

 Doctor Science prescribed should be provided, because above all else he 

 desired to have the queen restored to health and happiness, for he did 

 not care to try to live without her again. On the other hand, they both 

 agreed that they would test the doctor's prescription on part of the land 

 on which they lived and have also some land without such treatment, in 

 order to compare the results. 



There were three very uniform fields of typical prairie land which 

 had been in permanent pasture for many years, but on which King Corn 

 had recently lived for three years in succession, and they had produced 

 for him as an average of those years the following yields : 



Field A 63 bushels per acre. 



Field B 63 bushels per acre. 



Field C 66 bushels per acre. 



They were now sown for three years to oats, clover and cowpeas, after 

 which each field was divided into three parts and, in accordance with the 

 advice of Doctor Science, limestone and phosphorus were applied, not to 

 all of the fields, however, because a test was to be made of the treatment. 

 Thus no treatment was applied to Field A ; limestone alone was applied 

 to Field B, and both limestone and phosphorus to Field C. On all 

 three fields the second crop of clover was plowed under just in propor- 

 tion to what grew on the land, and in the later years the corn stalks, 



3 Phosphorus is the valuable element of plant food contained in natural 

 rock phosphate and also in bones, and large amounts of phosphorus are re- 

 quired for clover as well as for corn and other crops. 



