ALFALFA, THE ENCHANTED HERB 

 F. D. CoBURN, Topeka, Kan. 



Author of Alfalfa, Sicine Husbandry, The Book of Alfalfa-, and Swine in 

 America, and for more than twenty years secretary of the Kansas Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



HISTORY 



A peculiar circumstance in relation to 

 American agriculture is that the peren- 

 nial clover we call alfalfa — the Medicago 

 satlva of botanists, the lucerne of Europe, 

 and the most productive and profitable 

 forage plant known, a reliance in the old 

 countries since man's beginning, which 

 prospers nearly everywhere — should be 

 so relatively new to most of this country, 

 to which it seems so especially adapted, 

 and in fact to a majority be as yet quite 

 unknown. We are told that it flourished and was of great impor- 

 tance to the husbandry of Persia, Arabia, Babylonia, Greece, 

 Home, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland. 



Known in later centuries as Spanish clover, and in parts of the 

 world as lucerne, it reached Western South America from Spain, 

 coming thence as Chilean clover northward to Mexico, and to 

 California perhaps sixty-odd years ago; then, gi-adually working 

 eastward, it attracted attention in the Middle West within but a 

 very recent time. It was but little more than two decades ago 

 that Kansas City, now probably the foremost hay market in the 

 world, saw its first car of alfalfa hay. Last year 12,131 carloads 

 were received, and it is distributed from there to every state and 

 every considerable community east of the Missouri River. 



However, the colonists, beginning more than two centuries ago, 

 made repeated attempts to establish alfalfa in the eastern part of 

 the United States, but usually with indifi"erent success. It seems 

 eventually to have secured a permanent hold in the limestone 



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