"That reminds me that we are greatly troubled with Japan clover on those slopes," said Mr. West. "Of course it makes good pasture for a few months, but it doesn't come so early in the spring as blue grass and it is killed with the first heavy frost in the fall. We like blue grass much better for that reason, but when we seed down for meadow and pasture, the Japan clover always crowds out the timothy and blue grass on those slopes." "And when you plow under the Japan clover, you get one or two good crops of grain," said Percy, "because this clover has stored up some much needed nitrogen and the soil is rich in all other necessary elements. Have you ever tried alfalfa on that kind of land? That is a crop that ought to do well there, especially if limestone were applied." "Yes, I have tried alfalfa," replied Mr. West, "and I tried it on a strip that ran across one of those steep slopes; but it failed completely, and, as I remember it, it was poorer on that hillside than on the more level land." "Did you inoculate it?" Percy asked. "Inoculate it? No. I didn't do anything to it, but just sow it the same as I sow red clover." "What does it mean to inoculate it?" asked Adelaide. "It means to put some bugs on it," said the grandmother; "some germs or microbes, or whatever they are called. Don't you remember, Adelaide, that I told you about that when I read it in the magazine a while ago? Don't you remember that somebody was making it and a man could carry enough in his vest pocket to fertilize an acre and he wanted $2 a package. Charles said that $1.50 a hundred was more than he could afford to pay for fertilizer, and he didn't care to pay $2 for a vest pocket package. Isn't that the stuff, Mr. Johnston?" "It listens like it, as the Swedes say," said Percy, "but the advertisements of these germ cultures put out by commercial interests are usually very misleading. The safest and best and least expensive method of inoculating a field for alfalfa is to use infested soil taken from some old alfalfa field or from a patch of ground where the common sweet clover, or mellilotus, has been growing for several years. I saw the sweet clover growing along the railroad near Montplain, and there is one patch on the roadside right where--when you enter the valley on the way to the station." "Right where Adelaide smashed that nigger's eye with her heel and helped Mr. Johnston capture them both," broke in the grandmother. "That's the only good thing I can say for her peg heeled shoes." Adelaide colored and Percy now understood what had been a puzzle to him.