BACTERIA 353 



be cured in the windrow. The leaves are the 

 most nutritious part of the plant, and they are 

 apt to fall off if the cutting be deferred, or if the 

 curing be done carelessly . 



Lot No. 9 was to be fitted for alfalfa as soon 

 as the season would permit. First, it must re- 

 ceive a heavy dressing of manure, to be ploughed 

 under. The ordinary plough was to be followed 

 in this case by a subsoiler, to stir the earth as 

 deep as possible. When the seed was sown, the 

 land was to receive five hundred pounds an acre 

 of high-grade fertilizer, and one hundred pounds 

 an acre of infected soil. 



The peculiar bacterium that thrives on con- 

 genial alfalfa soil is essential to the highest 

 development of the plant. Without its presence 

 the grass fails in its chief function the storing of 

 nitrogen and makes but poor growth. When 

 the alfalfa bacteria are abundant, the plant flour- 

 ishes and gathers nitrogen in knobs and bunches 

 in its roots and in the joints of its stems. 



I sent to a very successful alfalfa grower in 

 Ohio for a thousand pounds of soil from one of 

 his fields, to vaccinate my field with. This is 

 not always necessary, indeed, it rarely is, for 

 alfalfa seed usually carry enough bacteria to in- 

 oculate favorable soils; but I wished to see if 

 this infected soil would improve mine. I have 

 not been able to discover any marked advantage 

 from its use ; the reason being that my soil was 

 so rich in humus and added manures that the 



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