[TP 
BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 361 
vored, as well as in some localities where the soils seem to have 
been derived from granitic rocks. It is noticeable also in many 
places on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, and in the 
so-called Old Colony, that red clover prospers and tends to 
grow naturally on farms where hay from salt marshes is or 
has been used for feeding and bedding cattle. It is noteworthy 
that the effect of the sea-manure, while pointing clearly to the 
merit of potash, must depend upon saline compounds of this 
substance, 7. e. it goes to show that other compounds of potash 
beside the carbonate which is found in ashes may greatly promote 
the growth of clover. Of course the nitrogenous and the phos- 
phatic constituents of the sea-weeds would help the growth of the 
clover as they would that of another crop. So too the alkaline 
quality of the wood-ashes previously mentioned was doubtless ad- 
vantageous in helping to bring the humus of the soil into fit condi- 
tion for the clover to feed upon. It would consequently not be 
right to expect that a mere neutral salt, such as chloride of potas- 
sium, will generally serve so useful a purpose on clover as either 
ashes or sea-manure, though it may sometimes do an equal amount 
of good on soils capable of supplying assimilable nitrogen and 
phosphates. ‘There are in fact upon record the results of numer- 
ous experiments in which the use of one or another of the Stass- 
furt salts has greatly increased the growth of clover. For exam- 
ple, Mr. Sedgwick,* of Connecticut, having applied a large quantity 
of low-grade Stassfurt salt to oats without benefit, obtained from 
the land next year a remarkably fine crop of clover. Mr. Farrall,+ 
in his prize essay on the agriculture of the Scotch counties of 
Edinburgh and Linlithgow, says of the region about Edinburgh: 
‘¢ Clover-sickness is experienced in some cases and is undoubtedly 
owing to want of potash. . . . A friend applies kainit or potash- 
salts where the land was formerly clover-sick; now he raises 
splendid crops of clovers which are never thrown out in the win- 
ter months as they were before potash was used.” 
No doubt the so-called clover-sickness of land may be due to one 
cause in one locality and to some other cause in another. But it 
seems to be tolerably well made out that the trouble may frequently 
be alleviated by applying potassic fertilizers. 
The great favor with which gypsum was regarded, a century or 
* <«Bleventh Report of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture,” 1877-78, 
p. 369. 
+ ‘‘ Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society,” 1877 (4), 9. 23. 
