On the Giant Sainfoin. 



59 



above described. Nor is this all ; it is clear to me that the plant 

 will mature itself sooner in this way than with a spring crop, 

 unless the season should prove more than ordinarily favourable 

 for a crop sown with spring corn. There will also be no loss 

 with the corn crop. I have repeatedly known excellent crops of 

 the Giant Sainfoin producing, by the first week in June, from 

 35 to 40 cwt. of hay per acre, upon land which had produced 

 4, 4J, and in one instance 5 quarters of wheat the preceding year. 

 I am aware that the introducer of the Giant species recommends 

 that it should be sown upon land in high condition, without a 

 crop in the spring ; that some superior crops have been obtained 

 in this way, and that sometimes a crop of hay or seed has been 

 produced in the summer or autumn, upon land sown the preced- 

 ing spring; but this is a practice which will never be generally 

 adopted. 



I have been thus particular in detailing the results of my ex- 

 perience as to the cultivation of Sainfoin in a wheat crop, not 

 with a view to condemn a different practice, where such practice 

 has for any length of time been successfully adopted ; on the con- 

 trary, J should advise parties desirous of cultivating this species of 

 the plant, to adopt the same course as they have known to be 

 successful in their various localities in reference to the common 

 sainfoin, the requirements for its cultivation being, in my opinion, 

 (with one exception, to which I may hereafter advert,) precisely 

 similar. Still, when it is evident that a more successful method 

 is practised in another locality, I hold it to be the duty of enter- 

 prising characters to try it in their own, taking care to do so with 

 caution. 



I hold that man to be a novice, however valuable and extensive 

 his acquirements may be, who, upon finding himself placed in a 

 new locality, should forthwith fancy he has nothing to learn from 

 his neighbours, who, with their forefathers, have from age to age 

 been located upon that particular spot, and must therefore have 

 had ample means of acquiring the knowledge necessary to suc- 

 cessful cultivation. On the other hand, I should hold those 

 parties to be anything but wise men who should wilfully shut 

 their eyes to any experiment which a stranger but newly located 

 among them might make, merely on account of its novelty. 



Having fully explained what I have found to be the most suc- 

 cessful method of securing a plant of Sainfoin, I proceed to show 

 how the Giant species may be brought into profitable cultivation, 

 in a general way, upon farms where the four-course system of 

 cultivation is adopted, without any material disorganization of 

 such system, and with such apparent success as, I flatter myself, 

 will so commend itself to the intelligent cultivator of the soil, by 

 the ample remuneration it must of necessity produce, as to bring 



