SUMMARY OF ALFALFA SOWING. 499 



usually needs no grinding to make it decompose in 

 the soil. If it is broken into fragments as coarse 

 as eggs it will in a year nearly disappear from sight. 

 It could be loaded on cars with steam shovels for 

 probably 25 cents per ton and sent out to farmers 

 not within reach of the lime hills. Used liberally 

 on the loams, clay and sandy soils of the surround- 

 ing region, it would marvelously promote their abil- 

 ity to grow legumes of all sorts, even to alfalfa. At 

 Macon, Miss., E. V. Yates covered a plot of sandy 

 well enriched soil an inch deep with this decomposed 

 unpulverized limestone, and sowed it to alfalfa. The 

 result was splendid, the alfalfa growing there taller, 

 more thrifty and more healthy than in the limestone 

 prairie soils near by. The sandy soil was almost 

 perfectly drained, and that is the key to his suc- 

 cess. I hope to live to see millions of tons of this 

 so easily quarried limestone used on the lands of 

 Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. 



Alfalfa in the Delta of the Mississippi River. — 

 For some years I co-operated with Bolton Smith in 

 an endeavor to renew the life of a number of dead 

 plantations in Louisiana. It was a vast tract of 

 abandoned land, abandoned partly because of dis- 

 couragement concerning the cotton boll weevil and 

 largely because of soil difficulties. The land belonged 

 to a syndicate of Scots. My part of the work was 

 to study the soils and how to renew them. I learned 

 that the land was a dense, very fine clay, deposited 

 by overflows of the Mississippi Eiver, with a good 

 deal of lime, phosphorus and potash in it but very 



