252 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
a very hot sun, with abundant water and a long 
growing season. The practice was to flood the land 
immediately before mowing off the crop; this made 
the alfalfa start vigorously into new growth as soon 
as it was raked off. In a week another flooding was 
given, the earth taking all the water it could absorb. 
As this land was beautifully drained by being under- 
laid with sand and gravel of great depth and no un- 
derlying moisture it never suffered from too much 
moisture; thus growth was extremely rapid. 
Furthermore, in that arid region the subsoil is 
quite as fertile as the top soil. There is little differ- 
ence in texture or soil content whether one takes soil 
from the surface or from a depth of 20 feet or more, 
and doubtless the alfalfa roots penetrated quite 20 
feet in that soil. 
I. D. O’Donnell once pointed out to the writer 
near Billings, Mont., an irrigated farm of exactly 
160 acres, all in alfalfa except a small lot around the 
house and barn, maybe two acres in all, and from 
which he had bought the hay one year. It. amounted 
to fully 1,000 tons, or a little more than six tons per 
acre. 
Irrigation is impractical under eastern farm con- 
ditions, as a rule. There are farms, however, near 
the mountains, in what might be called the Piedmont 
sections of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, 
Virginia and the Carolinas, where irrigation would 
be quite easily arranged and some day this will be 
done. Irrigation would pay richly in the Kast as well 
as in the West. It is much practiced in humid Eng- 
