ly heavy. The years of mowing are arranged in the crop-rotation
to provide for as many harvests as promise immediate profit. On some
land this is two years, and not infrequently it is three. Where farms
are difficult of tillage, it is a common practice to let timothy stand
until the sod is so thin that the yield of hay is hardly worth the cost
of harvesting. Then the thin remnant of sod is broken for corn or other
grain, and the poor physical condition of the soil and the low state of
available fertility lead to the assertion that timothy is hard on the
soil. This is a fair statement of the treatment of this plant on most
farms.

Object of Sods.--The land's share of its products cannot be disregarded
without loss. The legumes and grasses come into the crop-rotation
primarily to raise the percentage of organic matter that the land may
appropriate to itself within the rotation. Some of the crops usually
are for sale from the farm. Most of the crops require tillage, and that
is exhaustive of the store of humus. A portion of the time within the
rotation belongs to a crop that increases the supply of vegetable
matter, unless manure is brought from an outside source. Sods lend
themselves well to this purpose because they afford some income, in
pasturage or hay, while filling the soil with vegetation. The tendency
is to forget the primary purpose of sods in the scheme, and to ignore
the requirement of land respecting a due share of what it produces.
Attention centers upon the product that may be removed. The portion of
the farm reduced in productive power for the moment goes to grass,
while the labor and fertilizers are concentrated upon the fields that
are broken for grain and vegetables. The removal of all the crop at
harvest, and probably the pasturing of after-math, are the only matters
of interest that the fields, depleted by cultivation and seeded down to
grass, have for the owner until the poor hay yield and the need of a
sod for corn draw attention again to them.

Seeding with Small Grain.--The usual custom is to sow grasses with
small grain, and there is much to commend it. The cost of preparing the
seed-bed rests upon the grain crop, and the conditions are favorable to
fall growth and winter protection, if the seeding is made in the fall.
Wheat and rye are good crops with which to seed. In the case of fertile
land there is the danger that the timothy will establish itself too
well in a warm, moist autumn to permit c