The Prescott daily news., 1915-10-06
|. GLASSES OF FORAGE CROPS.

|. GLASSES OF FORAGE CROPS.
 Any vegetable matter fresh or cured eaten by live stock such as hay, grain fodder, or silage is included in the class of forage and those crops grown primarily for that purpose are known as forage crops. Whenever a cereal crop is grown for hay, pasture. or sil- age 1t too is called forage crop. Every farm maintains a few head Of live stock for which it is necessary to provide feed The most successful men are growing the feed at home to avoid the necessity of buying.
 One-half of the total acreage of American forage plants consists of ti- mothy and clovers, but the greatest amount of roughage is produced from corn. Over five million acres of slfal- ia are now being grown i'll the United States. Much wheat, oats. rye. millet sorghum and Sudan grass are grown for rough forage. Cow peas, soy beans. tho cloVers, and many tame grasses such as Bermuda, orchard grass, red top, and crab grass are grown to a considerable extent for hay and pas ture. In addition to all of the above there are more than seventeen million acres left to wild grasses. Forage in the United States exceeds in value that of all other crops.
 Legumes, while not grown so ex- tensively as grasses, are more valua- ble, pound for pound. because they al- most uniformly have a higher protein or flesh forming content than other crops. Of more than one hundred le- gumes comparatively few are of agri- cultural value in Arkansas.
 The grasses are either annual like sorghum, mifiet, or Sudan grass. or perennial like orchard grass, Bermp- da, or Johnson grass The roots of grasses are very small and usually Ike for only one season. As compared with other crops grass seeds do not have mgh germinating power.
 The class of forage crops known as legumes includes peas, beans, alfalfa, clovers, vetches, and many others. This forms a most important agricul- tural class of plants in that most or its members have the ability to use free nitrogen taken from the atmos- phere by the aid of certain bacteria that forms nodules on the roots. Very few other plants and none of agricul- tural value in Arkansas have this ability. These facts have been known only for a comparatively short time. That the nOdules on the roots of these plants contained bacteria was not discovered until tS66 and it was not until 1887 that Hellriegel demon strated that leguminous plants could utilize atmospheric nitrogen by aid of these bacteria in the root nodules. It was known even before Christ that the growing of certain legumes help ed succeeding crops, but the reason was not known until the recent dis coveries.
 The organism causing the nodules on leguminous plants occurs in many different forms because in only few instances has it seemed possible to inoculate one crop with the organ isms from another. According to Pi- per the only proven case of this is that of alfalfa and sweet clover, either of which can be inoculated with the organisms from the other.
 The root nodules on various le. gumes vary widely in size, shape and abundance. On most clovers they are small, globular and oftentimes club shaped, On alfalfa they are usually some longer and oftentimes more branched On Vetches they are very much branched and often fan shared. On coWpeas, peanuts. anu most beans they are irregularly glob- IT ar and solid. The soy bean nodules aI Q a'so gIobuiar, but have raised gee on the surface. It is said that velvet bean sometimes has no [ g es as large as a baseball Some Of leguminous crops of Arkansas, al fl for example, are dependent upor