1868.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
57 
ever railroads penetrate a country, we have the 
facilities for the transportation of weeds. Some 
of these plants seem to follow the white man 
wherever he goes, a fact which the savage long 
ago observed and gave to a common weed 
the expressive name of "White man's foot." 
The plant is much branched, 3 or 4 feet high, 
with rather slender stems. The leaves with the 
sharp, yellow, 3-parted spines at the base of 
each, and the oblong bur, are given of the nat- 
ural size in the engraving. This bur contains 
two seed-like nuts resulting from two pistillate 
flowers ; these are enclosed in a covering or in- 
volucre, which, as the fruit ripens, becomes hard 
and the hooked prickles become very stiff. The 
staminate flowers are borne in separate heads 
upon the same plant. The botanical name of 
the plant is Xanthium spinnsum. The generic 
name is derived from the Greek word for yel- 
low, as it is said that some of the plants yield a 
yellow dye. As to its specific name, spinomm, 
we might say that it named itself. The com- 
mon Clotbur, or Cocklebur, is another Xanthi- 
um, and is well known to every farmer's boy 
who has had to pick its prickly burs out of the 
tails of horses or the fleeces of sheep. The burs 
of the present species show a similar persist- 
ence in clinging, but it is a little fairer than the 
other in presenting its thorns to warn the ani- 
mals off. Fortunately the plant is an annual, 
and if attended to when it appears, need 
not become established. It can readily be iden- 
tified before the seed has formed, and when 
once cut down will not spring up from the root. 
A Kansas Corn Crib. 
We venture to say that the corn, crib here 
represented is the best in the State of Kansas— 
at any rate, it is a good one, plumed and built 
by an Ottawa Indian, John T. Jones, familiar- 
ly known to Kansas people as "Ottawa Jones." 
The excellent example the " red skin " sets to 
his "pale face" brethren, will be appreciated 
by all familiar with the rail-pen cribs almost 
universal at the West. The corn crib will save 
grain enough from the rats to pay its cost in a 
very few years. Mr. J. P. Brown, of Ottawa, 
who sends us the sketch, describes it as 16 feet 
wide, 25 feet long ; having a drive way through 
it, approached on either side by an inclined 
plane, connected with the building by a draw- 
bridge, shown raised in the engraving, and form- 
ing part of the door. The posts are two feet 
square, protected by zinc caps extending 8 
inches on all sides. The sides of the crib are 
upright slats placed an inch and a half apart. 
This arrangement has the advantage over 
most other plans which we have commended to 
our readers, of affording abundant floor room 
for shelling, etc., for the corn must be stored in 
slatted bins around the Bides, or spread upon 
the floor evenly, one or two feet thick, to be 
sure of its not being injured by heating. 
Rotation of Crops. 
In forming plans for the future improvement 
of the farm, a good rotation is of the first im- 
portance. The neglect of this is ruining the 
virgin soils of the West. Continued wheat 
cropping has diminished the wheat yield one 
half or more. States and Counties that once 
averaged twenty to twenty-five bushels to the 
acre, do not now average more than ten or 
twelve. The rotation in the grain districts of 
Pennsylvania is convenient, simple, and has 
borne the test of long experience. It keeps up 
the yield of wheat to twenty-five bushels to tlio 
acre, and corn to forty or fifty. It is as follows : 
1st year, corn upon a sod, limed in the early 
fall, and turned over in the spring, or turned 
over either in the fall or spring, and the lime 
spread upon the inverted sod ; 2d year, a crop 
of oats, or a summer fallow, with all the manure 
spread in the fall; 3d year, winter wheat, with 
six quarts of timothy to the acre, at drilling, 
and six pounds of clover seed, the following 
March ; 4th year, a crop of clover for hay, and 
a second crop for seed ; 5th year, timothy for 
one, two, or three years, according to the strength 
of the land. The aim is to keep up the land to 
a productiveness of two tons of hay or more to 
the acre, and if it falls below this, it is an indica- 
tion that more lime and manure is needed. 
A common rotation in Canada is: 1st, wheat; 
2nd, clover for two years ; 3d, fallow ; 4th, 
wheat ; 5th, oats ; 6th, peas ; 7th, a bastard fal- 
low; 8th, wheat; making three crops of wheat 
in eight years. But the land runs down under 
this treatment without manure, and this must 
come in as a part of the rotation in any improv- 
ing system, upon ordinary land. And even 
upon the prairies and bottoms, where they get 
forty bushels of corn in constant succession, it 
would pay better to use manure, and get eighty 
or ninety. In the older States, where grain is 
raised with less profit, manure is still more im- 
portant, and is the foundation of all successful 
husbandly. Manure should accompany every 
hoed crop, or be used in large quantities, once 
in a rotation of five years. Hay is a very val- 
uable crop, and with sufficient top-dressing or 
irrigation, land may be kept constantly in grass. 
It always needs more manure when it falls 
short of two tons to the acre. There is a hand- 
some profit in raising this quantity of hay to 
the acre, but one ton is a very poor business. 
In any system of rotation for Eastern fiirmers, 
potatoes, oats, and hay, should have a place. 
The "New Forage Plant"— Lespedeza striata. 
For some time past the papers published at 
the South, both agricultural and others, have 
had accounts of a remarkable "new plant" 
which bad made its appearance spontaneously 
and multiplied rapidly. It seems to have a 
wonderful vigor, as it not only occupies waste 
places, but has taken possession of old fields 
and crowded out the weeds. Even the Bermuda 
grass, so difficult to eradicate, disappears before 
it. Among the names that have been given to 
it is "Little Wild Clover," but it is not a clover, 
and it was only when specimens were sent to 
Prof. Gray at Cambridge, that its proper name 
became known. Prof. G. determined it to be 
:■./ striata, a plant heretofore known only 
as a native ot Japan and China. We have 
several native species of Lespedeza, which have 
the popular name of Bush Clover, and that 
Mould answer very well as a common name for 
this plant ; at least, better than " Japan Pea," by 
which name it has been called in some papers. 
It is really neither a clover nor a pea, though all 
three belong to the same family. It is supposed 
by some that this plant was introduced into the 
Southern States during the war, but a note by 
Prof. Gray iu the American Naturalist for 
November, states 
that it was known 
to Prof. Darby of 
Georgia,ten years 
ago; and Mr. G. 
H. Cartledge says 
in the Southern 
Cultivator that it 
was observed by 
him ten or twelve 
years ago. That 
a plant from such 
an out of the way 
country as Japan 
should make its 
appearance in 
Georgia is cer- 
tainly strange, 
though it is not 
so unusual, that, 
when once intro- 
duced, it should 
.show great vital- 
ity and crowd out 
other plants ; we 
have numerous 
instances of this 
in many other in- 
troduced plants. 
It is supposed 
that the war had 
much to do with 
the general dis- 
tribution of the 
plant, and that 
the passage of 
cavalry and large 
droves of beeves 
aided its dissemi- 
nation. The fact 
that in new localities it first makes its appear- 
ance along the road sides gives probability to this 
view. A correspondent, whose name we have 
unfortunately mislaid, sent us a specimen, from 
which we have had an engraving made, showing 
the top of a plant of the natural size and a seed 
pod magnified. The plant was first described in 
Thunberg's Flora of Japan (1784) as Hedysarum 
striatum, and afterwards Hooker and Aruott in 
the Botany of the Voyage of the Beechy, placed 
it in the related genus of Lespedeza. Hooker 
and Arnott describe it as an annual, as does Mr. 
Cartledge, above referred to ; while Prof. Rains, 
who gives a chemical account of it in the South- 
ern Cultivator for November, speaks of it as a 
perennial. The plant grows a foot or more 
high, and bears three-parted leaves which are 
not very abundant. The flowers are small ; one 
is borne in the axil of each leaf and followed 
by a small, one-seeded pod. The agricultural 
value of the Lespedeza does not seem to be satis- 
factorily determined. Mr. Cartledge says: "It 
is, without doubt, a valuable plant. All kinds 
of stock and fowls are fond of it and thrive well 
when and where it is plentiful. Chickens will 
scratch after the seeds and keep fat all winter 
where they are abundant. It will grow well in 
a pine thicket where nothing else will grow." 
Some say that it is eaten only by cattle. The 
chemical analysis above referred to shows that it 
ought be a nutritious food, but the writer thinks 
the woody stems will prove an obstacle to 
usins it as cured fodder, unless it be cooked. 
LESPEDEZA STRIATA. 
