112 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
and the hills of Judea—where grew such grapes, 
such goodly grain, such grass that the land literally 
flowed with milk and honey; Judea where David the 
shepherd boy walked and tended his sheep and grew 
to the stature of a man; Judea, where Christ walked 
and lived and loved—is a land of limestone, the lime 
soft and honeyeombed by water, constantly decaying 
and giving its riches to the soil. It is a curious 
thought, indeed, that had it not been for the lime- 
stone in the hills of Judea, perhaps the Master of 
mankind might have been born in another land. 
Availability of Lime.—So far as the writer’s re- 
searches ‘have extended, everywhere that limestone 
is found alfalfa grows naturally, almost of itself. 
This book will be read by many men, we hope, who 
have not been blessed by being placed on soils rich 
in carbonate of lime. Let them not thereby be 
overmuch cast down. This is an age of machinery 
‘and of cheap transportation. Limestone exists in 
incalculable amounts throughout a great part of the 
United States, and can be burned or ground raw, and 
transported from the cliffs to the farms at very small 
cost. This will be done some day, no doubt. It is 
only a question of the farmers awakening to the 
advautages to be derived from the use of abundant 
carbonate of lime, and their asking for it, when 
manufacturers will be glad in nearly every state, 
as they have in Ohio, to place the stuff on the market 
at a reasonable rate. My good friend, Prof. A. D. 
Selby, of the Ohio agricultural experiment station, 
himself almost as great an enthusiast on lime as the 
