ALFALFA. 



Dr. Lipman. 



Mr. Prksidknt and Fridnds : 



The Arabs came to Spain to destroy and occupy the territory 

 that belonged to the natives. They brought with them a plant 

 which by most of us is now called alfalfa. The Spaniards, when 

 they went to the new world to look for silver and gold, brought 

 seeds of alfalfa with them and left it along the western coast of 

 South America to become acclimated and to find its way up the coast 

 to the North. We find, therefore, that the spread of alfalfa in this 

 country was from the west to the east, rather than from the east to 

 the west, even though attempts to grow alfalfa were made in the 

 east before the end of the i8th century. 



The spread from the west to the east presents to us a very in- 

 teresting story. For instance, in 1891 Kansas had 35,000 acres of 

 alfalfa. Now Kansas has perhaps 1% millions of acres of alfalfa. 

 In view of the soil enriching qualities of this crop, we can under- 

 stand what alfalfa has done and even now is doing for Kansas, Col- 

 orado, Nebraska and California. But it is not only in the West and 

 Middle West that alfalfa is doing great things for the improvement 

 and enriching of soils, for near our own doors alfalfa has been 

 becoming more and more prominent. 



Only the other day I saw it stated in a bulletin from the Wis- 

 consin Experiment Station that twenty years ago the crop was 

 practically unknown in that State. But Wisconsin has now 25,000 

 acres and in the next three years will have 50,000 acres in alfalfa. 

 In our own State, New Jersey, there were probably less than 200 

 acres of alfalfa ten or eleven years ago. Now we have between 

 three and four thousand acres of alfalfa. Its spread in New York 

 and Pennsylvania has been no less significant. Indeed, it is safe to 

 predict that alfalfa growing in the Eastern States has passed the 

 experimental stage. From now on we may expect to see the rapid 

 spread of alfalfa and the enhancing of its reputation as a soil 

 enriching crop. Its ability to restore worn out soils will be appre- 

 ciated as fully as it was appreciated by the Romans who praised it 

 for its health-restoring as well as its soil-restoring qualities. They 

 referred to it as *'Herba medica," the medicinal plant and fed it 

 to animals that had lost their appetite. In South America, too, 

 alfalfa has come to be a potent factor in agricultural development. 

 Thanks to it the wild prairie is converted into arable land and ren- 

 dered fit to grow profitable crops of wheat. In a word, then, al- 

 falfa gains an enviable reputation wherever it is given an opportu- 

 nity to demonstrate its value. Hence I shall attempt to point out 



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