— 8 — 
an open loamy soil, but its power to adapt itself to other 
soils is very evident. Its doing well in heavy clay and light 
sandy soils, but being less productive in the latter unless 
well provided with plant food, attest that the plant is a 
heavy feeder. The range of altitude through which it will 
flourish is also great; while its range is less than that of 
timothy, it still reaches quite 8,637 feet on this side of the 
Rocky Mountains. I have seen a field of alfalfa in the San 
Luis valley, said to be fourteen years old, with an elevation 
of 7,900 feet, in which the stand was quite good and the 
plants healthy. It has also been successfully grown above 
Telluride, in this State. 
VARIETAL DIFFERENCES. 
The characteristics of alfalfa, which commend it for gen¬ 
eral culture by the farmers of the west, do not exhaust its 
points of interest to them. It is not constant in its specific 
characteristics, as almost every one has observed, some of 
the plants differing in color, shape, and size of both stem 
and leaves, and often very greatly in hue and color of 
flowers. The variation in color and size of the leaves is 
often very noticeable, and the suggestion that proper selec¬ 
tion and careful propagation might result in establishing 
varieties with special merits for our climate and soils is no 
doubt true. The deep-green, narrow-leaved, red-stemmed 
plants, mostly with deep violet purple flowers, present a 
very different growth and mature earlier than the 
lighter green, larger leaved, green-stemmed and, as a rule, 
lighter-flowered plants. It has not been the writer’s good 
fortune to have the opportunity of seeing many recognized 
varieties of alfalfa, but the few which I have seen differ less 
from one another, or certainly in no case more than many 
individual plants do growing side by side in our alfalfa 
fields. We have not, as we desired to do, analyzed separ¬ 
ate plants to learn whether they have a varying composi¬ 
tion. We have found it feasible only to take samples rep¬ 
resenting the plant as grown for hay. Among the analyses 
will be found, however, four samples of as many different 
varieties; three from French seed and one from seed from 
Turkestan. The results of these samples do not bear out 
the suggestion made above in the measure that we might 
expect, but the differences between the three French varie¬ 
ties practically disappeared in our soils and climatic condi¬ 
tions. The same could not be said of the variety from 
Turkestan. This was distinct in habit and very uniform, 
and, while the composition of the hay differs but slightly 
from the others, the agreement between them being as 
