262 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



Though this newest of our crops did not come into our own 

 agriculture until approximately the opening of the twentieth 

 century, it is, after all, the oldest and most anciently known of all 

 our leguminous forage plants, excepting only the cowpea and 

 soy bean, which are used mainly for their seeds. Alfalfa was 

 known to the Greeks and Persians, who called it medica because 

 it had been brought from Media at the time of the Persian War 

 (470 b.c), though it apparently did not come into general culti- 

 vation until the first or second century after Christ. 



Candolle 1 has no hesitation in affirming that alfalfa is wild 

 in several provinces to the south of the Caucasus, in various 

 parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, Beluchistan, and Kashmir. Its 

 seeming nonintroduction into China and India is a mystery, 

 explainable only on the theory that the people preferred the 

 plants that bore heavy seeds, or that they neglected it for 

 some unknown reason akin to that which evidently deterred the 

 Aryans from developing cultivated meadows. 



The student will not fail to be impressed with the remarkable 

 significance of the fact that this oldest of all the cultivated for- 

 age plants should have been the last to be introduced into our 

 own agriculture, nor will he fail to note the scientific basis for 

 the failure of our first attempts, which, had they been successful, 

 might have greatly influenced the development of the eastern 

 and the middle states. 



The lentil. This plant is evidently a puzzle to the botanists, 

 by whom it is variously designated as Ervum lens, Lens eseulenta, 

 and sometimes it is put in the genus Cicer. This confusion is 

 probably due in part to the fact that the plant has been long 

 cultivated. It has already been remarked that man, when main- 

 taining himself with a small amount of animal food, quickly 

 turns to seeds of legumes as a source of nitrogen. 



or only closely related is not yet known, but the student should understand 

 that the sweet clover, though classified as a distinct species and in a different 

 genus, is after all, in many respects, almost indistinguishable from alfalfa, es- 

 pecially in its earlier stages of growth. 

 1 " Origin of Cultivated Plants," p. 103. 



