372 Wisconsin State Agricultural society. 
Farmers, think upon this subject, study and investigate it, 
experiment, bring all the brain force to bear upon it possible, and 
you will find it to pay. I never knew any branch of business, 
however prosperous, but what was made more lucrative by apply¬ 
ing common sense and thought to it, as one writer remarks, “ mix¬ 
ing brains with it,” and let me say right here, that I think no class 
of business requires more brains than intelligent and well directed 
operations upon the farm. 
I look upon clover as a cheap and excellent fertilizer. It pen¬ 
etrates the soil to a great depth, often five to eight feet, and hence 
brings to the surface mineral elements which even deep cultiva¬ 
tion cannot reach, and makes available for plant food the very 
properties of which the soil near the surface, has, from long and 
exhaustive cropping, become deficient in. Its roots are large and 
numerous, and furnish, when decomposed, a large amount of or¬ 
ganic matter, which, though much of it is at considerable depth, 
is sought out by the young plants and fed upon with avidity. I 
have a field in my mind which was in cultivation twenty years 
ago when I came to this state, and which I was informed had then 
been in cultivation five years, upon which were raised successive 
crops of corn, wheat and oats, without a spoonful of fertilizing ma¬ 
terial ever having been given it, and, as you may suppose, this 
land after having been thus treated for eighteen years, showed 
signs of sickness and exhaustion. The owner at this time, seeing 
his crop much reduced, wisely concluded to seed it to clover. It 
produced this crop in abundance, showing conclusively that it 
sought its food below where the former crops had been able to 
penetrate, or that it required different constituent elements upon 
which to feed. After partially, if not wholly renovating and re¬ 
storing this land to its original richness and value by this clover¬ 
ing process for some three years, the owner commenced his system 
of robbing again as usual. I was past that piece of land the last 
summer, and observed an excellent crop of corn there growing, 
better, I think, than grew upon it twenty years before. Clover 
was the only fertilizer ever used during the time it was seeded. 
When our lands show signs of exhaustion, after the three modes 
of preserving them mentioned have been carefully carried out, 
commercial fertilizers must be resorted to. First among those now 
