Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1886-02-26
RIue Grass Fer,,Iity.

The evidences of this fertility are every
where apparent Nature, even in those places
where she has been forced for nearly hun
bred years to bear so much at the hands of a
not always judicious agriculture, increasingly
struggles to cover herself with bushes of all
sorts and nameless annual grasses and weeds
Even the bluegrass contends in vain for com
plete possession of its freehold One is fore
ed, living here year after year, to note, even
though without the least sentiment, the rich
pageant of transitory wild. bloom that will
force passage for itself over the landscape
ornaments of golden dandelions in the lawns;
vast beds of violets, gray and blue, in DINNER
bosky gades patches of fl tunting sunh overs
along the roadsides purple thistles, and, of
deeper purple still, and far denser growth,
beautiful iron weed 10 the woods with many
clumps of alder bloom, aud fast-extending
patches of perennial black berry, aud groups
of delicate May-apples, aud whole fields of
dog-fennel and golden-rod. And why men
ton coarser s-indomitable dock and
gigantic poke, burrs and plenteous night
shade, and mullen and plantain, With dusty
gray green rag-weed and thrifty fox-tail ?-an
innumerable throng!
Maize and pumpkins and beans grow to.
gether in ZELDA triple crop. Nature per-
fects them all, yet must do more. Scarcely
have the plows left the long burrows before
fourth crop, morning lories, festoon the tall
tassels of the Indian corn ere the knife can
be laid against the stalk. Harvest fields usu.
ally have their stubble well hidden by deep,
rich aftermath. Garden patches, for all that
persistent hoe and rake can do, commonly
look at last like spots given over to weeds aud
grasses, Sidewalks quickly lose their borders.
Pavements would soon disappear from sight
the winding of distant stream through the
NalgN d. -. ALL
communistic vegetation that rushes there to
fight for life, from the minutest creeping
vines to forest trees. Every neglected fence
corner becomes an area for fresh colony.
Leave one of these sweet, humanized wood
land pastures alone for a short period of
years, it runs wild with dense young natur-
al forest vines shoot up to the tops of the
tallest trees and then tumble over in green
sprays on the heads of others.
A kind, true, patient, self helpful soil if
ever there was one Some of these lands at-
ter being cultivated. not always scientifically,
but always without artificial fertilizers, for
more than three quarters of a century, are
now, If properly treated, equal in produc-
tlVeness TO the best far ming lands of Fog
land. The farmer from one of these old
fields will take two different crops 10 sea-
son. He gets two cuttings of clover from a
meadow, and has rich grazing left. few
OF THESE counties have at time produced
three.f ourths of the entire hemp product of
the United States. The state itself has at
different times stood first in wheat and hemp
and Indian corn and wool and tobacco and
fax, and this although half it's territory Is
covered with virgin forests When lands I'M
der improper treatment have become impov-
erished, their productiveness has been restor-
ed, not by artificial fertilizers, but by simple
rotation of crops, with natures own help
The soil rests on decomposable limestone,
which annually gives up to it in solution ali
the essential mineral plant food that a judi
cious system of agriculture should ever re-
move.-Jdmes Lane Allen in Hdrper's Mag
dziRe for February.
The above is very pretty magazine litera-
ture and good for the blue grass region of
Kentucky; but the idea that decomposable
limestone can supply all the mineral elements
OF fertility that judicious system of agri-
culture should ever remove" is rather an art
full way of stating it,