188 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 



The difference between the price paid by the refrigera- 

 tors for pedigree-cattle and the price of animals of 

 Creole blood, which the local market takes, hurries up 

 the transformation of the herd. In order to watch 

 reproduction and nurse the pasture, the ranches put 

 up wire-fences. But the breeding methods are especi- 

 ally modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread 

 in the south of Cordoba and west of the Buenos Aires 

 province from 1895 onward, and from 1905 onward 

 in part of the San Luis province. There were already 

 small lucerne farms in the Buenos Aires province. 

 A description that was written at the end of the eighteenth 

 century speaks of lucerne farms round the town which 

 were reserved for feeding draught cattle.^ But the 

 area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at 

 the close of the nineteenth century is the district of 

 the Cordoba province that is crossed by the line from 

 Rosario to Cordoba, completed about 1870 to Bellville 

 and Villa Marina. The lucerne farms there were not 

 created by the breeders, and the lucerne was at first 

 intended for export to Rosario and Buenos Aires in 

 the form of dry fodder. The trade in dry fodder 

 has remained good there. The 1908 Census gives 

 128 square kilometres of lucerne for cutting in the 

 Tercero Abajo department (Villa Maria) and 267 square 

 kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).^ 



The lucerne spread southward and south-westward 

 from this point ; and the improvement of the herds 

 kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this 

 improvement was checked north of a line along the 

 course of the Parana, the northern frontier of the 



' Fernando Barrero, Descripcio-n de las provincias del Rio de la Plata 

 (published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos 

 Aires, 191 1). 



» Amongst the specialized industries connected with the develop- 

 ment of the lucerne farms we must mention the growing of lucerne 

 for seed, which has settled in the dry zones, where the lucerne is not 

 so much invaded by other species ; for instance, the district of Madanos, 

 west of Bahia Blanca. 



