xcellent crops when
these soils are properly tilled. It has special adaptation for being
grown on calcareous or limy soils. It also, usually, grows well on soils
underlaid with yellow clay of more or less tenacity.

The black humus soils of the prairie vary much in their suitability for
growing medium red clover. Much depends on the clay content in such
soils. The more of this element in them and the nearer an underlying
clay subsoil is to the surface, the better will this clover grow on
them. In large areas of the prairie, red clover will grow more
successfully on the subsoil when laid bare than when on the surface
soil. It has been the experience in many instances that when the humus
soils of the prairie, porous and spongy in character, were first tilled,
clover grew on them so shyly that it was difficult to get a good stand
of the same until it had been sown for several seasons successively or
at intervals. Eventually, good crops were grown on these lands, and are
now being grown on them. This was the experience that faced a majority
of the first settlers on the prairie where excellent crops are now being
grown, and it is the experience which faces many to-day, who are
located on sections of the prairie but newly broken.

Two reasons may be given by way of explanation, but these may not
furnish all the reasons for the experience just referred to. First, much
of the land was so porous in its nature that in dry seasons the young
plants perished for want of moisture. As such lands become worn through
cropping, they lie more firmly and compactly; hence, there is less loss
of moisture through the free penetration of the soil within a short
distance of the surface of the dry atmosphere. And second, the requisite
bacteria is not in these soils until it is brought to them by sowing
seed repeatedly, more or less of which grows, and in growing increases
the bacteria in the soil until that point is reached when good crops of
clover can be grown with the usual regularity.

The suitability of sandy and gravelly lands for growing clover depends
much on the amount of plant food which they contain, on the character of
the climate, and on the subsoil. Such soils when possessed of some loam
when underlaid with clay, and in a climate with 20 inches and more per
annum of rainfall, usually grow good crops of clover; but when
conditions the opposite prevail, the growth of this plant is precarious.
However, when sandy or gravelly soils l