110 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



pottery turned up by the plow. Naturally the late 

 treatment of these fields has been uniform, and as 

 much manure has been applied to one spot as to an- 

 other. When sown to alfalfa, however, a wonderful 

 story is told, since the alfalfa plants, rooting deep, 

 find stores of fertility in the subsoil, leached down 

 perhaps from the old gardens or cow lots, and held 

 from total escape by the presence in the subsoil of 

 great amounts of limestone gravel and smaller par- 

 ticles. The outline of these old gardens and cow lots 

 will be found so distinctly defined by the luxuriant 

 alfalfa growing thereon that one can say with cer- 

 tainty, ' ' Here stood the garden fence ; there was the 

 man 's cow lot. ' ' 



Maintenance of Fertility. In America we have 

 been wont to boast of the fertility of our farms. In 

 truth, we have great stores of fertility, yet none too 

 much, and in fact it is probable that there will not 

 be found in America one farm in a thousand as fer- 

 tile as it should be to yield a good profit. Other and 

 older lands are more fertile than ours. The old 

 fields of France have some of them been farmed for 

 a thousand years, and none can say how much 

 longer, and are producing today better than Ameri- 

 can fields; and in England the same story is often 

 true. These fertile foreign fields are rich in carbo- 

 nate of lime; and yet it is being added to and its 

 store increased by each provident owner. No Ameri- 

 can farmer should be content with his stores of fer- 

 tility as they exist today. His fields are not rich 

 enough if he can profitably make them richer, and 



