TURKESTAN AI^FAtFA — A HARDY NBW VARIETY 75 



vation, and continues: ' The native lucerne would seem 

 to be a cattle fodder that cannot be replaced in coun- 

 tries so dry and so hot as Turkestan and the Trans- 

 caspian province. Parallel experiments that have been 

 made in the Merv Oases, in the Transcaspian province, 

 in growing French lucerne, under widely diiferent 

 conditions of water supply, have shown that the native 

 lucerne, particularly where there is a lack of water, is 

 vastly superior to the French in the crop it yields, and 

 that it is able to grow satisfadlorily with a minimum 

 supply of water — a supply so small that the European 

 (common) lucerne would perish from drouth. This 

 peculiarity of the native lucerne is to be explained by 

 its peculiar formation. It possesses a very large root 

 system, and its leaves are covered with thick downj 

 this, in connedlion with a deep-cut orifice on the leaf, 

 enables the plant, on the one hand, to imbibe the 

 moisture from the deeper layers of the soil, and on the 

 other hand to exhale it in very small quantity. ' 



" Along the Volga River, at the dry -region experi- 

 ment stations of Eastern European Russia, I found this 

 plant doing well, and when I got to the desert and semi- 

 desert regions of Turcomania, Bokara, and the Semi- 

 retchinsk provinces of Russian Turkestan, all east of 

 the Caspian Sea, I made a careful study of the plant. 

 Here were camels by the thousand, and clouds of dust 

 often so thick that a wet sponge was found to be 

 essential for relative comfort and breathing. I was sa 

 pleased with what I had seen of this plant that I did 

 not stop until fully 18,000 pounds of seed was secured, 

 chiefly from the cotton-growing sedlions among the 

 Sarts or native Mohammedans. 



" The main reason for making the overland journey 



