It is a time-worn but no less true saying that good seed is essential to good agriculture. No matter how well the farmer prepares his land, no matter how much time, labor and money he spends on it, if much or all of his seed fails to grow, he will either have a poor crop or be obliged to reseed, thus losing time and labor. Many causes may contribute to prevent a good stand, but if he can eliminate any one of these, he is by so much the gainer. Poor seed is a primary and great cause of a poor stand. The farmer obtains his seed from one of two sources; he raises it or buys it. If the former, there should be less danger, as the chief source of poor seed is careless handling in harvesting and storing. If the seed becomes damp, mold will damage much of it, or it will sprout, then dry out, and the germ be killed. If seed is bought of strangers or from a distance, the chances of poor quality increase many fold. If all seed were bought of reliable dealers, there would be less cause for complaint, but farmers too often buy where they can buy cheapest. They pay for trash that is either full of harmful weed seeds or has a liberal admixture of old and dead seeds left over from previous seasons. Before seed is purchased it should be tested for purity and germination. The adage that a dollar saved is a dollar earned well applies here; it is an easy matter to waste a dollar on seed, and when profit depends on avoidance of useless expenditure the use of inferior seed points its own moral. IMPORTANCE OF SIMILAR CONDITIONS The farmer who has brought himself to the point of introducing alfalfa upon his farm should be extremely careful in the selection of seed. In the first place it is important that he should sow such as is produced in about the same latitude as his farm and from a region of about the same rainfall, thus keeping in a line of acclimation, and with the habits and habitat, as it were, of what he is seeking to raise. Next, he should not sow seed raised under irrigation if he is in a non-irrigation region. A Michigan farmer, for example, should sow seed grown as near to his latitude as possible, say, from Wisconsin, Minnesota or the Dakotas, or not south of Nebraska or Kansas. It is questionable, at present, whether it is wise or profitable to attempt raising alfalfa seed in the more humid districts of the eastern and southern parts of the United States. It may be economy to leave the raising of seed to those regions with the least summer rainfall, keeping always in mind the securing of seed grown under conditions nearly like those to which the seed is to be introduced. Speaking of the alleged different varieties of alfalfa, the seed of which is urged upon buyers by seedsmen, the editor of the _Oklahoma Farm Journal_ pertinently says: