80 



its looks has nothing etyrnologically to do with medicine, but 

 simply means the herb from Media. 



From Italy its culture spread northward into Middle Europe, 

 and westward into Spain. It was in the latter country that the 

 name alfalfa, an Arabic term, became attached to it, indicating 

 that it was under cultivation in the Spanish peninsula at the time 

 of the Moorish occupation. 



When Spain extended her sovereignty across the Atlantic a 

 new world was opened for alfalfa to conquer, and it made good 

 use of the opportunity, establishing itself as a blessing in the 

 bloody trail of devastation which the Spanish conquistadors of 

 the sixteenth century left behind them in Mexico and Peru. In 

 arid regions, where no succulent grass would grow, and where 

 clover would wither away, the alfalfa was sown, and by reason 

 of its great length of root, which enables it to draw moisture from 

 a great depth, flourished and increased. Down the South 

 American coast it made its way as far as Chile, and from that 

 country it was brought to California a few years after the ad- 

 mission of the Golden State to the Union. Thence its fame as a 

 valuable hay plant possible of growth in the dry lands traveled 

 throughout the West, until now it is the staple fodder crop on the 

 Pacific coast and in the Rocky Mountain region, from Montana 

 to the Gulf of Mexico. In. Pennsylvania the abundance of other 

 fodder plants has tended to keep the virtues of the alfalfa in the 

 background, but in New York State it has been more or less cul- 

 tivated for many years. — C. F. Saunders in Philadelphia Record. 



HOW SOME SEEDS ARE PLANTED. 

 Examine a fruit of the common Dog Violet. It is a little 

 capsule formed of three sections. As it ripens it opens along the 

 lines of junction of these, and we get three narrow boat-shaped 

 valves spreading horizontally from the fruit-stem, and each con- 

 taining several seeds. The drying of these valves causes contrac- 

 tion. The two gunwales, so to speak, of each boat are drawn to- 

 gether, pressing more and more tightly on the seeds which lie 



