If land is not naturally fertile, mineral fertilizers should be applied. A mixture of 350 pounds of 14 per cent acid phosphate and 50 pounds of muriate of potash is excellent for an acre of manured land. In the absence of manure, 100 pounds of nitrate of soda and 50 pounds of muriate of potash should be added to the mixture. If the materials are wet, a drier must be used. The fertilizer should be drilled into the ground prior to the seeding. A Clean Seed-bed.--Much failure with alfalfa is due to summer grasses and other weeds. The moisture in our eastern states favors plant-life, and most soils are thoroughly stocked with the seeds of a large number of weeds. The value of blue-grass and timothy would be comparatively small if they were not capable of monopolizing the ground when well started and given fertility. Alfalfa plants are less capable of crowding out other plants, and especially in their first season. Their habit of growth is unlike that of grass. Rational treatment of alfalfa demands that the surface soil be made fairly clean of weed seed, and this applies with peculiar force to annual grasses, like fox-tail. If attention were paid to this point, failures would be far less numerous. Old grass land should not be seeded until a cultivated crop has followed the plowing. The land should be in good tilth, and capable of producing a good crop of any sort. Alfalfa is not a plant for poor land, although it does add organic matter and nitrogen. Varieties.--There is only one variety of alfalfa in common use in this country, and the western-grown seed sold upon the market is known simply as alfalfa. Bound up in this one so-called variety are many strains differing in habit of growth, and their differentiation will occur, just as it has in the case of wheat, and is now proceeding slowly with timothy. The eastern grower at present should use the variety of the west that is furnishing nearly all the seed produced in this country. There is a variety known as Sand Lucerne that has shown value for the light, sandy soils of Michigan. The Turkestan variety was introduced for dry, cold regions, but does not produce much seed. Clean Seed.--Care should be exercised to secure seed free from impurities. If one is not a competent judge, he should send a sample to his state experiment station for examination. The practice of adulteration is decreasing, but the seed may have been taken from land infested with pernicious weeds. The impurity most to be feared is dodder. There are several varieties, the seeds varying in size and color. The same pest may be found in clover fields, but the injury is less because the clover stands only two years. The dodder seed germinates in the soil, and the plant attaches itself to the alfalfa, losing its connection with the soil and forming a mass of very fine vines that reach out to other alfalfa plants. In this way it spreads, feeding on the sap of the host plants and killing them.