INTRODUCTION. 
In March, 1886, the writer, a tall awkward young 
man fresh from ‘he fields of Ohio, was traveling by 
rail through Utah. Near Provo he began to see 
snug farms with trees, meadows, orchards, granaries 
and haystacks. Some of these stacks had been cut 
in two with the hay knife, and he noticed with won- 
der the beautiful green color of the fresh cut sur- 
face. Calling the attention of the conductor to this 
phenomenon, so strange to him, he asked, ‘‘ What 
sort of hay is in those stacks?’’ ‘‘Lucern,’’ prompt- 
ly replied the conductor. ‘‘And what makes it so 
green?’’ ‘‘It’s green because that’s the color of it,’’ 
sagely replied the smiling conductor, as he pocketed 
a cash fare and moved on about his business. At 
that date lucern, or alfalfa, had not spread much 
east ‘of the valleys of Utah; some was grown in Col- 
orado, but it was a new thing there. The Utah 
farmers were many of them English and Danish, 
hence their choice of the old name lucern, while the 
Spanish term alfalfa had come in from Chili by way 
of California. 
Late that night the writer reached Salt Lake City 
and early next morning he was up ready to explore. 
In his rambles about the quaint old city (more old- 
world than American at that time with its houses 
of adobe, its walled gardens and orchards, its rows 
of towering Lombardy poplars) he came across a 
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