GROWING BY IRRIGATION. 
Alfalfa is a desert plant and thrives best when un- 
der desert conditions—dry, clear air, plenty of sun 
and much moisture applied by means of irrigation 
water. All the greatest alfalfa growing regions in the 
world are irrigated countries. The great civilizations 
of the world first grew up in arid regions where men 
must irrigate or perish. It is a curious fact that civil- 
ization, and especially organized communal civiliza- 
tion, did not first spring up in rainy lands, where 
one weuld think that life would be easiest, but in 
the dry, burning, half-desert lands, such as Persia, 
Babylonia, Egypt, and in our own land in Arizona 
and New Mexico and Colorado. In these old dry 
lands where men must toil to make dams and canals, 
to distribute water and rescue plants from death by 
thirst, there grew up cities and civilizations per- 
taining to cities; there stood the farm house of sun- 
dried bricks, alike in Babylon and in Arizona; there 
stood the communal mass of dwellings, the palaces; 
there developed written language, priesthood, civic 
conscience, communal spirit and the genius of 
organization that brought to its present-day develop- 
ment has girded the world with steel bands, built 
great cities, canals, railways, steamships and all the 
modern machinery of a complex life of civilization. 
The forest-dwelling man in a land where it rained 
seemed to have things all his own way. He dwelt 
(77) 
