GETTING A STAND OF ALPALFA. 105 
that live on the roots of the clover and other le- 
guminous plants. Alfalfa has its own special bac- 
teria that enables it to appropriate the free nitrogen 
of tthe air. Alfalfa will not thrive, nor even live 
very long, without these bacteria helping it. It has 
become used to them, it depends upon them much 
as the southern people depended upon slave labor 
in days gone by. And alfalfa-promoting bacteria 
will not live in all soils. In some soils they are 
found in myriads after alfalfa has grown there for 
a little time, as its near relatives melilotus or bur 
clover. What sort of soils do we find these bacteria 
to thrive best in when nature has planted them, un- 
helped by man? What sort of soils are they that 
produce alfalfa spontaneously? Let us go afield. 
Natural Seeding of Alfalfa—The nearest to 
wild alfalfa that is found in America perhaps is in 
Montana, along the Yellowstone River. There the 
writer has seen fields sown to timothy grass invaded 
by the alfalfa plant and gradually crowded out till 
at last there was a fine stand of luxuriant alfalfa and 
that without the sowing of one alfalfa seed. Thus 
it happened: the canal water floated down a few 
seed and deposited them near the top of the grass 
field. They grew and established themselves as 
lusty alfalfa plants. After the timothy grass was 
mown off the alfalfa went to seed and scattered a 
circle of self-sown alfalfa seeds about the mother 
plant. Next year there were many alfalfa plants 
where there had been only one, and these in turn 
went to seed. The end was a well set alfalfa field, 
