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 
2a 
