There appears no record of a time when alfalfa was not in some portions of the world esteemed one of Nature’s most generous benefactions to husbandry and an important feature of a profitable agriculture. Its beginning seems to have been contemporary with that of man, and, as with man, its first habitat was central Asia, where the progenitors of our race knew its capabilities in sustaining all herbivorous animal life, and where, possibly, it too afforded the herbage which sustained Nebuchadnezzar in his humiliating exile, and eventually restored him to sanity and manhood. It was carried by the Persians into Greece with the invasion by Xerxes in 490 B. C., utilized by the Romans in their conquest of Greece, and carried to Rome in 146 B. C. Pliny and other writers praise it as a forage plant and it has been in cultivation in parts of Italy continuously from its introduction. Some writers are disposed to aver that it was brought to Spain and France by the Roman soldiery under Cæsar and early thereafter, but more probably it was not introduced into those countries until several centuries later. It is known to have been cultivated in Northern Africa about the time it was first brought to Italy; and the name “alfalfa” being Arabic the inference might be reasonable that it was introduced into Spain by the Moors from Northern Africa at the time of their conquest of Spain about 711 A. D., but this is of small consequence to the twentieth century. From Spain it crossed to France, and later to Belgium and England. It was highly spoken of by an English writer of the fifteenth century. AMERICA INDEBTED TO SPAIN But in those ages Europe was not so much interested in agriculture as in war. Land tenures were not well fixed and ownerships were uncertain. Spain, however, was to perform at least two important services for half the world, if none for herself. She was to reveal to civilization a new continent, and give to it the most valuable forage plant ever known. And so, in 1519, Cortes, the Spaniard, and his remorseless brigands carried murder, rapine and havoc to Mexico, but gave alfalfa. Less than a score years later Spain also wrote in Peru and Chili some of the bloodiest pages of human history, but left alfalfa there, where it has since luxuriantly flourished. If it was brought to the Atlantic coast of the United States in that century, it was not adopted by the Indian inhabitants, who were not an agricultural people, nor by the early European settlers.