GROWING BY IRRIGATION. 



Alfalfa is a desert plant and thrives best when un- 

 der desert conditions — dry, clear air, plenty of sun 

 and much moisture applied by means of irrigation 

 water. All the greatest alfalfa growing regions in the 

 world are irrigated countries. The great civilizations 

 of the world first grew up in arid regions where men 

 must irrigate or perish. It is a curious fact that civil- 

 ization, and especially organized communal civiliza- 

 tion, did not first spring up in rainy lands, where 

 one would think that life would be easiest, but in 

 the dry, burning, half-desert lands, such as Persia, 

 Babylonia, Egypt, and in our own land in Arizona 

 and New Mexico and Colorado. In these old dry 

 lands where men must toil to make dams and canals, 

 to distribute water and rescue plants from death by 

 thirst, there grew up cities and civilizations per- 

 taining to cities ; there stood the farm house of sun- 

 dried bricks, alike in Babylon and in Arizona ; there 

 stood the communal mass of dwellings, the palaces; 

 there developed written language, priesthood, civic 

 conscience, communal spirit and the genius of 

 organization that brought to its present-day develop- 

 ment has girded the world with steel bands, built 

 great cities, canals, railways, steamships and all the 

 modern machinery of a complex life of civilization. 

 The forest-dwelling man in a land where it rained 

 seemed to have things all his own way. He dwelt 



(377) 



