260 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 
T. pratense and its nearly related form, 7. medium, merge 
together in literature; indeed, the latter is to be regarded as 
little more than a variety of the other, to which botanists have 
given a specific name more for convenience than from necessity. 
Neither of these, however, has been long cultivated. 7. pratense 
grows wild throughout Europe, in Algeria, in Asia Minor, and 
in southeastern Siberia. It must have been long known to the 
people of Europe, but its first known introduction into cultiva- 
tion was in Flanders in the sixteenth century, from which it 
made its way into England in 1630, through the efforts of the 
Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor.! There is no San- 
skrit or other Aryan name either for clover, sainfoin, or alfalfa, 
from which Candolle concludes that these people maintained no 
artificial meadows. 
Clover is then a new thing just out of the wild, and ready, 
indeed waiting, for the hand of the improver. Its many related 
species and their wide natural range lend confidence to the hope 
that out of this new and fresh material may arise most valuable 
varieties for agricultural purposes. 
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), variously known also as_ lucern, 
French clover, purple medic, Chilean clover, Spanish trefoil, etc. 
has been long cultivated in western United States, where it was 
introduced by the Spanish in an early day. It was tried a few 
generations ago in New England and the eastern states along 
with other European “ grasses,” quite naturally bearing its 
French name, lucern. It did not, however, succeed. The gen- 
eral conclusion at that time was that this “child of the sun” 
required a deep, loose, sandy subsoil and was unable to thrive 
on the somewhat stiff clays of that region. 
However, it gradually worked eastward from the Far West, 
jumping the Great American Desert with some difficulty and 
delay, and finally, after all these centuries, was a few years ago 
well introduced into Mississippi valley agriculture, where it easily 
outyields any forage crop known, commonly affording three 
1“ Origin of Cultivated Plants,” p. 105. 
