26 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
too often discouraged bv clover failures, and have made this an 
excuse for the general slackness in the cultivation of the 
grasses. 
Some soils are naturally adapted to grass crops ; and sucb, 
with occasional fertilization, will often produce successive 
crops without much deterioration for many years. Others, 
with the greatest care, cannot be kept in grass more than a few 
years, without breaking up and re-seeding. It should also be 
borne in mind that clover belongs, by nature, to a system of 
rotation of crops, and should not be expected to flourish for a 
term of years without renewal. Treated in a proper manner, 
even clover may be successfully grown upon almost any soil 
capable of producing the ordinary grasses and the whole class 
of plants to which it more properly belongs. Scarcely any 
other plant so well fulfills the two-fold office of yielding a 
valuable crop for farm use, and of actually enriching the soil, 
and giving it, moreover,, an admirable mechanical preparation 
for other crops. 
Our farmers are likewise either slow in learning the import¬ 
ant art of hay-making, or very slow in putting in practice the 
knowledge they already possess. So true is this that only a 
small proportion of the hay that finds its way to market, or is 
consumed on the farm, is of prime quality. Often it is cut 
quite too late ; in which case the sweet juices have been dried 
up and an undue proportion of the nutritious elements has 
been concentrated in the seed, which also, in turn, is lost to 
the hay, as finally put away in mow or stack, by shelling out, 
in the rough process of gathering in. Often, when cut at the 
proper time, it is allowed to lie in the field for a period twice 
as long as necessary, and successively exposed to dew and rain, 
and scorching sun, until all the life and aroma have gone out 
of it. And, again, when cut at the right time and. got into 
stack or barn in good condition it is practically ruined at last, 
for want of a few pounds of salt, requisite protection from the 
storms of autumn and winter, or needed ventilation. 
In no branch of farming is that careless, helter-skelter, flur¬ 
ried, slip-sflod way of doing business, wflicfl so distinguisfles 
