880 
STATE ‘AGKICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
think is the form in which nitrogen is assimilated, par excellence by cereal 
crops, and in which, at all events it is more efficacious than in any other state 
of combination wherein it may be used as a fertilizer. 
When the clover-lay is plowed up early, the decay of the clover is suf- 
fi.ciently advanced by the time the young wheat-plant stands in need of read¬ 
ily available nitrogenous food, and this, being uniformly distributed through 
the whole of the cultivated soil, is ready to benefit every single phnt. This 
equal and abundant distribution of food, peculiarly valuable to cereals, is a 
great advantage, and speaks strongly in favor of clover as a preparatory crop 
for wheat. 
Nitrate of soda, an excellent spring top-dressing for wheat and cereals in 
general, in some seasons fails to produce as good an effect as in others. In 
very dry springs the rainfall is not sufficient to wash it, into the soil and to 
distribute it equally, and in very wet seasons it is apt to be washed either 
into the drains or into a stratum of the soil not accessible to the roots of 
the young wheat. As therefore the character of the approaching season can 
not usually be predicted, the application of nitrate of scda to wheat is 
al«rajs attended with more or less uncertainty. 
The case is different when a good crop of clover hay has been obtained 
from the land on which the wheat is intended to be grown afterwards. An 
enormous quantity of nitrogenous organic matter, cs we have seen, is left in 
the land after the removal of the clover crop; and these remains gradually 
decay and furnish ammonia, which at first and during the colder months of 
the year is retained by the well known absorbing properties which all good 
wheat soils possess. In the spring when the warnier weather sets in, and the 
wheat begins to make a push, these ammonia compounds in the soil are by 
degrees oxidized into nitrates; and as this change into food, peculiarly favor¬ 
able to the yonng cereal plants, proceeds slowly but steadily, we have in the 
soil itself, after clover, a source from which nitrates are continually 
produced; so that it does not much affect the final yield of wheat whether 
heavy rains remove some or all of the nitrate in the soil. The clover 
remains thus afford a more continuous source from which nitrates are 
produced, and a greater certainty for a good crop of wheat than when 
recourse is had to nitrogenous top-dressings in the spring. 
The remarks respecting the formation of nitrates in soils upon which 
clover has been grown, it should be stated, do not emanate from mere spec¬ 
ulations, but are based on actual observations. 
I have not only been able to show the existence of nitrates in clover soils, 
but have made a number of actual determinations of the amount of nitric 
acid in different layers of soils on which clover has been grown; but as this 
paper has grown already to greater dimensions than perhaps desirable, I 
reserve any further remarks on the important subject of nitrification in coils 
for a future communication. 
' The following are some of the chief points of interest which I have 
endeavored fully to develop in the preceding pages: 
