146 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



for railway ballast or for concrete construction? 

 And here is another machine, more interesting yet, 

 a machine of prophecy, a machine meaning great 

 things to the farmer, for in this machine, so small 

 and apparently insignificant, the rock is ground 

 rapidly into powder and this powder through end- 

 less carriers is loaded into cars, no man's hands 

 touching it after it is first dumped, and from this 

 mi]l it goes forth by cars to the fields of Ohio. Think 

 what this means; somewhere an old sour clay field 

 refusing to grow clover, refusing to grow anything 

 rich enough to yield profit, sending no boys to col- 

 lege, giving little hope to the owner, and now under 

 one shower of this ground limestone will come the 

 miracle. The sourness will disappear, clover will 

 grow, the bees will hum, the mower will click, the 

 boy will whistle, books will come into the home and 

 magazines, and let us hope some lad from that farm 

 will start to the university. 



Building Soils to Stay Built. My father was a 

 firm believer in the idea that a soil could be so en- 

 riched that it would afterward stay rich, that it 

 would gain momentum enough, so to speak, so it 

 would keep on caring for itself afterward. There- 

 fore he would apply manure in large amounts to 

 one spot of land after another, seeking to establish 

 this condition of things. 



There is much basic truth in his theory and his 

 practice was not far wrong. When much manure is 

 worked into sweet soil, a soil well stored with car- 

 bonate of lime, there is set up there a laboratory 



