132 
Annual Report of the 
it stated that the use of lime lies at the bottom of all improved 
husbandry, but it is used in connection wifh clover or its equiva¬ 
lent, and this plays the most important part. While this is so well 
established, how few there are who recognize and act upon it. If 
it were expensive, requiring a great outlay of capital and time, it 
would alter the case; but, on the contrary, it will produce prompt 
and satisfactory results from the start. 
While there is much clover grown in the state, yet it is more 
difficult to find a man who raises it regularly in due course of ro¬ 
tation than might at first be supposed. Its real character and 
place on the farm is not so generally understood as it needs to be. 
Some have sown it for permanent meadow, and because it killed 
out in two or three years have abandoned it. Others have sown 
it at spasmodic intervals, but because of the high price of the seed 
have often substituted timothy. Timothy, for hay and pasture, is 
generally preferred to clover, and possibly with reason. But this is 
not the whole of the case: the good of the land must be consulted 
as well as the tastes of the cattle. A man who has once secured a. 
crop of clover seed should never have occasion to buy seed again. 
I never sell myself short of a 3 r ear’s supply in advance. On my 
own farm I have no use for timothy, only as I seed new, stumpy 
land, which must be mown with a scythe for a few years. My land 
is a tolerably heavy clay loam, which easily settles down so hard as 
to lock up its fertility until opened by the strong action of the clo¬ 
ver. Under the clover rotation it will \ij in mellowness with the 
best of prairie soil. 
Timothy exhausts land, while clover improves it. Of its mode 
of action I do not wish to speak now. We discussed this at some 
length in our convention a year ago. I will refer to the piece of 
land owned by George Geddes, which, since the year 1799, has re¬ 
ceived no other manuring than its own crops of clover turned under 
once in five years. The clover in its rotation has been plastered, 
now for more than fifty years, with still increasing benefit. In 
18*9, when Prof. Johnson visited this country, his attention was 
called to this piece of land, and while he was astonished at the re¬ 
sult, he predicted ultimate failure. Twenty-five years have since 
passed, and Mr. Geddes still reports an increase of fertility. If a 
five-year’s rotation will improve land steadily for seventy-five years, 
who will place the date of its failure? - 
