2 



open, with but little snow. Severe frosts occur sometimes, but these 

 very rarely last long. In many places the evaporation exceeds by 

 many times the quantitj' of moisture that has fallen in the course of 

 the year. From May to September very little rain falls, often only 

 1 . 1 inches, and in many parts of the steppe regions, which are re- 

 moved from the mountainous districts, there is absolutel}' no rain 

 during the entire summer season. Drj^ winds from the north and 

 northeast prevail during the summer, with a temperature of about 

 loO F. (40 degrees Celsius), which generally dry up the whole Tur- 

 kestan basin until vegetation can not exist without irrigation. The 

 extent of watered lands in Turkestan is, in comparison with its whole 

 area, by no means great, not more than two and one-half per cent, 

 which is altogether insufficient for the subsistence of its population. 

 This deficiency is partially redeemed by the growing of wheat, barley, 

 and millet, which depend on the winter moisture in the soil and a suf- 

 ficient fall of rain during the spring. 



MERITS OF TURKESTAN ALFALFA OVER THE EUROPEAN VARIETIES. 



The following extracts from an article by Prince V. I. Massalski, 

 of the Russian Department of Agriculture, show its great value to 

 the arid regions of Russia over the European varieties : ^ 



Lucern clover (Medicago sativa var. Turkestanica) is the chief forage in use 

 throughout Central Asia, and to the settled population of Turkestan is of the 

 highest importance, since diiring the summer it forms the chief, and in winter, 

 prepared in the shape of hay, the only fodder for cattle. It is of all the greater 

 importance because, within the regions populated by settled inhabitants, there 

 are no meadows. Soft herbs and other grasses that grow up in the early spring 

 in certain parts of the steppes are quickly dried up by the hot rays of the sun 

 and give place to coarse, prickly stubble, or, in any case, to less nutritive grasses 

 that are in general tmfitted for sheep, camels, or stepjie cattle, and still less fitted 

 for horses or the cattle of those who are settled in the oases, and are thus closely 

 confined to the foreland or rivers, in most cases far removed from the steppes. 



Massalski describes the native methods of cultivation and irriga- 

 tion, and continues — 



The native lucern would seem to be a cattle fodder that can not be replaced 

 in countries as dry and hot as Turkestan and the Transcaspian Province. Par- 

 allel experiments that have been made in the Merv oases, in the Transcaspian 

 Province, in growing native and French lucern, under widely different conditions 

 of water supply have shown that the native lucern, particularly where there is 

 a lack of water, is vastly superior to the French in the crop it yields, and that it 

 is able to grow satisfactorily with a minimum supply of water, a supply so small 

 that the European lucern would perish with drought. It possesses a very large 

 root system, and its leaves are covered with thick down. This, in conjunction 

 with a deeply channeled leaf, enables the plant on the one hand to imbibe the 

 moisture from the deeper layers of the soil ; and on the other hand, to exhale it 

 in very small quantity. 



The Industries of Russia, 3; 459, 1893. 



