150 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
been mown in early blossom is doubtless well suited, when fed by 
itself, for producing milk or the like; but there is a difficulty with full- 
grown clover, in that the old stalks are not only hard and bulky, but, 
comparatively speaking, indigestible, and on that account not so well 
adapted for producing milk or flesh as the mere analysis of the plant 
would indicate.* For the same reason, that is to say, its comparative 
indigestibility, clover hay, as ordinarily harvested, is not particularly 
well fitted to serve as a nitrogenous re-enforcement to ordinary hay or 
straw. In hot dry climates, moreover, like our own, there is great 
risk of losing much of the best part of the clover plant during the 
process of hay-making, for the crisp dry leaves are particularly liable 
to be broken into fragments too small to be collected by the rake. 
But without their leaves the stalks of mature clover are by no means 
either a well-proportioned or a concentrated kind of food; on the con- 
trary, they are to be regarded as of the nature of straw. 
The white clover of our pastures is to be classed, of course, as pas- 
ture grass; and all that has been said of young grass will apply to 
young white clover, with equal or even with greater force. From the 
chemical point of view, the young clover needs to be supplemented 
with a less highly nitrogenous food. 
The old discussions here in New England, as to the fodder value of 
broom-corn seed, which have already been referred to on page 96, 
well illustrate the difficulty of dealing with a highly one-sided kind of 
food, in the absence of any just knowledge of the principles which 
should determine the mixing of foods. Pumpkins, on the other hand, 
which contain a fair proportion of nitrogenized constituents (see page, 
83,) have commonly been used, as it happened, in a very proper way, 
and have consequently been held in high estimation. The use of 
pumpkins as an addition to hay or fodder-corn for feeding cattle com- 
mends itself, and the not uncommon practice of feeding hogs of a 
certain age with boiled or steamed pumpkins, plus corn-meal, is, 
chemically speaking, very much more commendable than the use of 
corn-meal with apples, as mentioned above, or even with the use of 
corn-meal and potatoes. 
The question has sometimes been asked, seriously and in good faith, 
* Compare the remark of Boussingault, in his “Rural Economy,” New 
York, 1865, p. 592, as well as the more recent experiments of the German agri- 
cultural stations. 
