=Securing Seed.=--Localities differ much in their capacity to produce alfalfa seed. The best crops of seed are now grown west and southwest of the Mississippi River. Certain areas in the semi-arid country east of and between the ranges of the Western mountains seem to have special adaptation for growing seed. At the present time the greatest seed-producing States are Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California. But in some areas east of that river paying crops can be grown. It has also been noticed that when the crop is sown less thickly than it is usually sown for hay, the plants seed more freely, when sown with sufficient distance between the rows to admit of cultivating the crop, and when such cultivation is given, the influence on seed production is also markedly favorable; such treatment given to the varieties of recent introduction may possibly result in the production of seed from the same, notwithstanding that they bear seed very shyly when grown in the ordinary way. Nearly all the seed now grown in the United States is produced by fields that have been sown in the usual way, and primarily to produce hay, but in some areas, especially where irrigation is practiced, it is sometimes grown mainly for seed. On the irrigated lands of the West it is customary to grow the first cutting of the season for hay and the second for seed. But in many instances the second cutting also is made into hay, and the seed is taken from the third cutting; even in the States east of the Mississippi, and also in Ontario and Quebec, seed is usually taken from the second cutting. But in Montana, Washington and Idaho, on the higher altitudes, seed is not unfrequently taken from the first cutting for the season, since, in the short season for growth of those uplands, seed from cuttings later than the first does not always mature so well. In a large majority of instances seed does not form so profusely from plants of the first cutting as from those of later growths. This is thought to arise, in part, at least, from the fact that bees, and it may be other insects, are then less active in searching for food, and because of this do not aid in the fertilization of the plants as they do later. Nor does seed of the first cutting ripen so evenly. An important justification is also found for taking seed from the later cuttings, in the fact that when a crop has produced seed, it grows less vigorously during the subsequent period of growth that same season. So pronounced is this habit of growth in alfalfa, that in many localities, if the first growth is allowed to produce seed, but little subsequent growth will be made again the same season. The second cutting, all things considered, is the most favorable to seed production, as, unless on irrigated lands, the third cutting is not usually possessed of that vigor necessary to induce abundant seeding in the plants.