“_Cuscuta arvensis_ is another dodder as destructive when once established. Its seeds (p. 47) seem to be less common, however. They are larger than the preceding, many of them being practically the same size as the smaller, more rounded alfalfa seeds, which they often strikingly resemble. Thus they are hard to detect, and cannot be removed without the loss of much small alfalfa seed. This should be the more dreaded of the two dodders, because alfalfa seed infested with seeds of _Cuscuta epithymum_ can be made practically free from them with comparatively little loss and expense. Not so, however, with seed containing _Cuscuta arvensis_, which should not be purchased at any price. Dodder seeds can scarcely be regarded as an adulterant, yet as an impurity they are very common and most objectionable.” (See illustrations opp. pp. 45, 46 and 47.) _CHAPTER V._ Soil and Seeding VARIATE, YET UNIFORM In this double title we have a case of the widest variations and the most positive and rigid uniformity. Alfalfa may be grown in almost every possible kind of soil and under almost all soil conditions (save two), but omitting these the seeding, including the tilth of the ground, is based, so far as any future success is concerned, on perfect cultivation. The dictum, “Alfalfa must have a dry, warm, sandy loam, very rich” has become obsolete, as already pointed out. There are just two soil conditions that seem absolutely against the growth of alfalfa. The first is a soil constantly wet. The common remark, “Alfalfa will not stand ‘wet feet’,” seems to be the expression of a law. It does not do well where the water is nearer to the surface than six feet, or where in winter water will stand on the ground for over forty-eight hours. This invariably smothers the plants; in fact it usually kills any crop. If water flows over the field for some such time, due to a freshet, the alfalfa is often found uninjured if too much soil has not been deposited on and around the plants. Even in such instances fields have been saved by a disking once or twice, but it is wholly unwise to sow on a field subject to overflow, or one where water rises to the surface in winter or spring; likewise on a field so flat that water will not run off in time of a heavy rain or promptly drain out through the sub-surface. The time is rapidly coming everywhere when the intelligent farmer will not try to raise any crop on such a field, undrained. The alfalfa roots will find their way to moisture if given the right surface conditions. There are profitable alfalfa meadows in parts of Kansas where it is eighty feet to water, but there has not yet been found one that is prosperous where water comes close to the surface, or where it stands on the ground in winter. [Illustration: =Three General Types of Alfalfa Seed=