260 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



T. pratense and its nearly related form, T. medium, merge 

 together in literature ; indeed, the latter is to be regarded as 

 little more than a variety of the other, to which botanists have 

 given a specific name more for convenience than from necessity. 

 Neither of these, however, has been long cultivated. T. pratense 

 grows wild throughout Europe, in Algeria, in Asia Minor, and 

 in southeastern Siberia. It must have been long known to the 

 people of Europe, but its first known introduction into cultiva- 

 tion was in Flanders in the sixteenth century, from which it 

 made its way into England in 1630, through the efforts of the 

 Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor. 1 There is no San- 

 skrit or other Aryan name either for clover, sainfoin, or alfalfa, 

 from which Candolle concludes that these people maintained no 

 artificial meadows. 



Clover is then a new thing just out of the wild, and ready, 

 indeed waiting, for the hand of the improver. Its many related 

 species and their wide natural range lend confidence to the hope 

 that out of this new and fresh material may arise most valuable 

 varieties for agricultural purposes. 

 > Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), variously known also as lucern, 

 French clover, purple medic, Chilean clover, Spanish trefoil, etc. 

 has been long cultivated in western United States, where it was 

 introduced by the Spanish in an early day. It was tried a few 

 generations ago in New England and the eastern states along 

 with other European "grasses," quite naturally bearing its 

 French name, lucern. It did not, however, succeed. The gen- 

 eral conclusion at that time was that this " child of the sun " 

 required a deep, loose, sandy subsoil and was unable to thrive 

 on the somewhat stiff clays of that region. 



However, it gradually worked eastward from the Far West, 

 jumping the Great American Desert with some difficulty and 

 delay, and finally, after all these centuries, was a few years ago 

 well introduced into Mississippi valley agriculture, where it easily 

 outyields any forage crop known, commonly affording three 



1 " Origin of Cultivated Plants," p. 105. 



