IN THE DIFFERENT STATES 141 



Station at Geneva has a field ot five acres, and they 

 speak highly of it. Heretofore, red clover has been 

 successful, and it has generally been the opinion of 

 the farmers that where red clover would produce two 

 good crops per year, it was not wise to attempt to 

 raise alfalfa. The wheat farmers especially prize the 

 red clover because it prepares the ground so admirably 

 after it is either one or two years old for winter wheat 

 and also corn. Red clover has failed so often within 

 the last few years in this state that many farmers have 

 attempted to substitute alfalfa for it. Many parts of 

 New York, I think, are too cold .for alfalfa, and I am 

 sure in many localities the subsoil is not congenial." 



M. H. H., Steuben County, N. Y., writes in Rural 

 New Yorker: " In the spring of 1899 I sowed one acre 

 of fertile clay loam corn stubble, after an excellent 

 preparation with Clark's cutaway and spring-tooth 

 harrows, sowed to oats, seeding down with one-half 

 bushel of alfalfa and six quarts of timothy. The growth 

 of grass seeding was light at harvest, owing to dry, 

 hot weather, but later rains gave the alfalfa a fine 

 growth ahead of the red clover in the rest of the field, 

 which had been killed considerably, especially after 

 the oats were harvested. I pastured lightly with 

 sheep, and it went into winter with a fine promise of a 

 crop this year. But I was doomed to disappointment: 

 it all lay with its foot-long roots on top of the ground. 

 It could not be the exposed situation, as some sheltered 

 but arid land shared the same fate. It might have 

 been different under a more favorable winter. As a 

 dry-weather plant it proved a grand success, but as a 

 winter plant on our hills it was a dismal failure." 



"Alfalfa grows well in the fine alluvial lands of the 



