446 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



profitable corn production to the edge of tlie sage 

 brush, and even beyond this a little way, can with 

 right management produce alfalfa seed. And this 

 alfalfa seed growing may pay as well as good grain 

 crops will pay in more rainy lands. I am fortunate 

 in having at command a careful study of this whole 

 subject by two master minds, Charles J. Brand and 

 J. M. Westgate, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 Department of Agriculture, which is submitted : 



The growing of alfalfa in cultivated rows for seed is of more 

 recent origin in this country than is the production of hay by 

 this method. John Spurrier, in a book entitled "The Practical 

 Farmer," published at Wilmington, Del., in 1793, appears to be 

 the first American writer to mention the growing of alfalfa in 

 cultivated rows. The cultivation was designed to retard the de- 

 velopment of weeds, which often prove very destructive to the 

 broadcasted seedings of alfalfa in the Middle and South Atlantic 

 States. This method is still practiced to a slight extent in a 

 few places in the South, where, however, the climate is too 

 humid for the successful production of alfalfa seed. 



In England as early as 1730, Jethro Tull, the inveijtor of the 

 drill and the originator of tillage of farm crops In the modern 

 sense, advocated and practiced the growing of alfalfa (lucern) in 

 rows. His teachings first appeared in his "Specimens." Later, 

 in 1829, these were republished by Cobbett in a work entitled 

 "TuU's Horse-Hoeing Husbandry." 



What was apparently the first attempt to grow alfalfa for 

 seed in cultivated rows in this country was made by what was 

 then known as the Section of Seed and Plant Introduction of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. Several contract fields 

 of Turkestan alfalfa were seeded in wide rows in different parts 

 of the Great Plains area in 1903. The poor seeding habits of 

 Turkestan alfalfa when grown in this country, together with the 

 fact that the plants were grown much too thickly in the rows, 

 greatly handicapped the logical development of this method. 



The application of the row method of cultivation has been 

 suggested by a number of American experimenters, including 

 Prof. W. J. Spillman, Prof. W. M. Hays, Prof. W. A. Whepler, 

 Mr. W. M. Jardine and Mr. C. S. Scofield. Of these only Prof. 



