State Convention—Renovation of Soils. 309 
be plant-food. Hundreds have used it on land with no perceptible 
good, while thousands who have applied it at the rate of a 
bushel to the acre have doubled their crops of clover Who, then, 
can tell why it fails, when it fails, and why under appearantty sim¬ 
ilar conditions it produces such magical results in vegetable growth; 
and this when such an infinitessimal quantity falls on each square 
foot, when sown at the rate of a bushel per acre. By all means let 
us use plaster where it is useful—use it on our clover, about our ma¬ 
nure piles, and in our stables. 
MIXED FARMING. 
A few }^ears ago, on the high, dry prairie-lands near my home, 
three acres out of four were devoted to wheat-growing. Year after 
year, wheat was grown on the same land. For miles and miles the 
country presented almost an unbroken wheat-field. On large farms, 
the stock was limited to the working-teams, a few pigs, a cow or 
two, tethered with ropes by the road-side; no sheep; no fat cattle; 
no blooming clover-fields. This condition of things invited insect 
enemies. The wild-oat and other noxious weeds took almost en¬ 
tire possession of whole farms. In the impoverished wheat-fields, 
the chintz-bugs were rapidly propagated. Farmers were driven to 
bankruptcy by them, or forced to sell out and go west, there per¬ 
haps to repeat the same destructive source. Now, a change is tak¬ 
ing place. This change may be termed the transition period in 
our farming, commencing where the exhaustive crops of grain taken 
from the soil, left it in a condition where cultivation had ceased to 
be profitable, to the adoption of a system of rotation, whereby its 
exhausted fertility is being restored. Now a system of rotation is 
being adopted. Large fields of red clover are seen. The lean cow 
tethered by the road side, has disappeared. On these hitherto dry 
and waterless-farms, an abundant supply of water is drawn from 
wells by the aid of pumps and wind-mills, and dairy-farming is pro¬ 
fitably carried on. 
u Red clover,” says Joseph Harris, u is pre-eminently the renovat¬ 
ing crop of this country.” 
George Geddes says, u it should be made the pivotal crop.” 
Dr. Daniel Lee says, “ red clover draws more of its nourishment 
from the air than it does from the soil, and so returns to the soil 
when plowed down, far more fertilizing matter than it draws from 
