HISTORY. 47 
All these things happened many thousands of 
years ago. The best things done by men are older 
than recorded history. The taming of the ass, the 
taming of the horse, the taming of the cow, the devel- 
opment of the milk-giving powers of the cow, the 
caring for sheep and goats, the breeding of sheep for 
wool, the spinning of wool and flax, the melting of 
ores—all these primal things happened long 
centuries ago. Since historic times man _ has 
learned very little indeed that ‘the needed to 
know; the important, primal, essential things were 
all worked out before men began to write upon stone 
and upon parchment. 
It is not certain that there exists today any wild al- 
falfa. There are places where some has escaped from 
cultivation and gone wild, but all alfalfa, so far as 
known, has so changed its form from what it would 
be in the wild state that it is doubtless bearing in its 
nature the very marked signs of the moulding hand 
of man. For example, all alfalfa so far as known 
today needs to be cut off from time to time to keep 
it in thrift. No wild plant requires that. Alfalfa 
that we know reflects a long line of civilizations, re- 
flects the habits of people who have kept cows and 
donkeys and sheep and horses, kept these and fed 
them, carrying their forage to them on men’s backs 
for ages untold. It requires no effort of the imag- 
ination when looking out upon an alfalfa field to 
picture the fields from which it sprung through the 
ages past. The little fields fair and green and fertile 
under hot glowing desert skies mostly. Little fields 
