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15, 1858, when it was officially visited by a committee. of the State Agricultural Society, was three feet high and in bloom. The alfalfa was not irrigated; the previous year a freshet had washed the bank, showing the roots twenty feet below the surface. "While all other grasses and clovers under similar circumstances are perfectly dry and yellow, the alfalfa exhibits most luxurious green," is the report of the committee. Soon after its introduction it was given its Spanish name "alfalfa," and after a longer interval it was recognized to be the old-world plant of historic renown, known popularly in Europe as "lucerne" and to the botanists as Medicago sativa.

All lands do not have water at twelve to twenty feet; some have water only at hundreds of feet; some do not have soil open to the water at any depth but are shut off from it by impenetrable hardpans or layers of alkali; some lands have water which will not remain at a proper depth but will rise too near the soil surface or above it. Therefore, it was soon learned that alfalfa could not be the universal summer-verdure plant by rainfall on all lands because natural conditions sometimes gave it too high a water-table which caused its fleshy roots to decay and sometimes sank so low that moisture fell below even its surprisingly great powers of penetration.

Alfalfa is profitable only when its demands are met by adequate irrigation. It will accept soil of great variation in quality and depth if irrigation is wisely administered so that it is never either desiccated or drowned. Thus alfalfa, which the pioneers hoped

would deliver them from irrigation, which they saw at first no way to apply to the vast interior plains, has become the greatest irrigated plant of the State and beyond. It is interesting that although lucerne was introduced at an early date to the Atlantic states both north and south, it never widely demonstrated superiority to other clovers nor did it advance far westward. On the other hand, the same plant under its Spanish name alfalfa, moved eastward from California until it again appeared full of honors on the Atlantic seaboard, where it had been neglected for generations. The eastward movement is interesting. The Mormons of Salt Lake were pioneers in irrigation by Americans on the Pacific Slope, but they had no alfalfa until they saw the California demonstration and profited by it. Alfalfa followed irrigation water in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Then came the movement eastward from the Rocky Mountains, Kansas and Nebraska first, and the whole sweep of the Mississippi Valley; then to the Atlantic Slope from New England to Georgia.

No single kind of plant (either herb, vine, or tree) is producing so great value in California as the alfalfa. No other comes so quickly to the homemakers' help on irrigated land or on suitable soil under rainfall, if properly protected from its enemies. No plant, save a vine or tree, endures so long in profitable service, or is so good to fit land for every other crop. Alfalfa is largely the basis of the following marketed products of the State for 1919:

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It may seem strange at first to credit eggs and honey to alfalfa. The egg product in the alfalfagrowing districts is increasing rapidly, and even in the coast regions, where alfalfa is little grown, alfalfa hay and meal from the interior enter largely into poultry rations. As for honey, which was formerly made on wild bee pasturage, the chief product comes now from the alfalfa fields of the irrigated valleys. If it is objected that the dairy product should not be wholly credited to alfalfa, let it be noticed that no credit is given to the plant for its vast meat production and its contribution to the motive power in farm work stock. In fact, there are only enumerated what might be called largely by-products of alfalfa, but the case may be safely committed on the evidence given, in expectation of a verdict that alfalfa is worth more than a hundred million dollars annually to California.

Naturally the absence of the meadow grasses of humid countries which excited the apprehension of the pioneers was accompanied by a quandary as to what they should do for hay. They learned that wild-oat hay, of which there was more than abundance, could be cut whenever there was a good annual rainfall. The pioneers soon found that wild oats were just as hard to eradicate as eastern meadow grasses were difficult to get in. Cronise in his

"Natural Wealth of California" (1868) gives the following picture:

"When California became first known to Americans the face of the country was nearly everywhere covered with wild oats. Though parched, in the long summer, the grain held firmly in its capsule, giving good pasture. The wild oat has bearded projections with bended joints like the legs of a grasshopper. The first rains limber out the joints which, being again dried by the sun, shrink, causing the berry to jump about, giving it wide distribution over the land-and falling into cracks in the soil is preserved in these natural receptacles from birds, squirrels and other animals."

If hay could be made of wild oats which have particular ability to hold on from year to year without perennial roots, the question arose as to why barley and wheat could not be sown to cut for hay when continued haying of wild oats took away the seed and reduced the yield too low. Therefore, the problem of how to get hay in California remained settled until the desirability of alfalfa was fully demonstrated and it became the chief hay of the State.

Of the relative desirability of hay from grains cut green and from timothy and other meadow grasses, the only enduring opposition to the former was put up by the quartermasters of the United States Army, and this existed until very recently. When the continued occupation of the Philippines made it necessary to ship hay across the Pacific, it took some effort by local congressmen to get Pacific Coast con

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Plate V. A rice field in the Sacramento Valley.

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