GETTING A STAND OF ALFALFA. 105 



that live on the roots of the clover and other le- 

 guminous plants. Alfalfa has its own special' bac- 

 teria that enables it to appropriate the free nitrogen 

 of the air. Alfalfa will not thrive, nor even live 

 very long, without these bacteria helping it. It has 

 become used to them, it depends upon them much 

 as the southern people depended upon slave labor 

 in days gone by. And alfalfa-promoting bacteria 

 will not live in all soils. In some soils they are 

 found in myriads after alfalfa has grown there for 

 a little time, as its near relatives melilotus or bur 

 clover. What sort of soils do we find these bacteria 

 to thrive best in when nature has planted them, un- 

 helped by man! What sort of soils are they that 

 produce alfalfa spontaneously ? Let us go afield. 



Natural Seeding of Alfalfa. The nearest to 

 wild alfalfa that is found in America perhaps is in 

 Montana, along the Yellowstone Eiver. There the 

 writer has seen fields sown to timothy grass invaded 

 by the alfalfa plant and gradually crowded out till 

 at last there was a fine stand of luxuriant alfalfa and 

 that without the sowing of one alfalfa seed. Thus 

 it happened: the canal water floated down a few 

 seed and deposited them near the top of the grass 

 field. They grew and established themselves as 

 lusty alfalfa plants. After the timothy grass was 

 mown off the alfalfa went to seed and scattered a 

 circle of self-sown alfalfa seeds about the mother 

 plant. Next year there were many alfalfa plants 

 where there had been only one, and these in turn 

 went to seed. The end was a well set alfalfa field, 



