14 THE BOOK OF ALFALFA 



W. R. Dodson, botanist of the Louisiana station, says 

 it is his firm conviction that nothing will contribute so 

 much as alfalfa toward making the southern farm self- 

 supplied with feed for work animals, for the production 

 of dairy products, and home raised meat. "I doubt," he 

 also says, "if alfalfa does better anywhere outside the 

 irrigated regions of the West than it does in the alluvial 

 lands of Louisiana. We have had as high as eight cut- 

 tings in one year, with a total tonnage larger than is had 

 in Kansas or Nebraska, and our annual rainfall is sixty- 

 five inches, or more." 



From Ontario, Canada, comes a report of a yield of 

 four tons to the acre in three cuttings, on a clay hillside ; 

 at far-off Medicine Hat, Northwest Territory, it makes 

 a growth pronounced "phenomenal," and at the experi- 

 mental farm at Brandon, Manitoba, three cuttings per 

 year are harvested. On a gravelly hill in the District of 

 Columbia a field was sown in April, 1900. Two crops 

 were cut from it that summer, three in 1901, and the 

 first cutting in 1902 yielded three tons per acre. In 

 southern Minnesota, some thrifty Germans, not knowing 

 that "alfalfa will not grow in Minnesota/* have been 

 raising it since 1872, while others were declaring it im- 

 possible. A half-score of men in the sagebrush wilds 

 of Nevada decided to try it, and in 1872 they had 625 

 prosperous acres, without plowing and without irriga- 

 tion. J. H. Grisdale, agriculturist of the Central experi- 

 mental farm at Ottawa, (Bui No. 46) says, "it is grown 

 in Canada more or less extensively from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific- It is the staple forage plant for winter in the 

 dryer part of British Columbia, and it has been grown in 



