48 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
for the most part walled often with walls of stone 
or of sun-dried bricks, lined with little canals of 
cool water with overhanging trees, fig trees or al- 
monds or palms, and brown men and women, lithe 
and strong, coming to cut the green meadow with 
curved sickles and scythes, gathering it in sheaves 
and carrying it on their backs through gates in the 
walls to the animals eagerly awaiting it in the en- 
closed corrals or stables. Alfalfa was developed in 
dry regions. It came, very likely, from southwest- 
ern Asia through Persia to Arabia, whence it got its 
name alfalfa, which simply means the best forage. 
The Persians grew it finely. Down along the rivers 
of Babylon in ancient Babylonia alfalfa was a stand- 
ard crop, most likely. Those river valleys are rich 
in lime and alkaline in their reaction, admirably 
suited to alfalfa culture, and there under irrigation 
alfalfa undoubtedly throve. The one reference to 
alfalfa in the Bible is found in the fourth chapter 
of the book of Daniel where in the thirty-third verse 
it is related of the king: 
“The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: 
and he was driven from men, and did eat grass [alfalfa] as 
oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his 
hairs were grown like eagle’s feathers and his nails like bird’s 
claws. And at the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up 
mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned to me, 
and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored Him that 
liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and 
His kingdom is from generation to generation.” 
The truth probably was that old Nebuchadnezzar, 
rich, spoiled, feasted and wined till he became in- 
sane, was turned out to graze in an alfalfa field till 
on this simple and nutritious diet his body was re- 
