I am planning to sow about forty acres more alfalfa this year. A writer for the _Breeder's Gazette _visited us last summer, and he said some of our alfalfa was as good as any he had ever seen in California. He said ground limestone was plainly what we need for alfalfa at Westover, but he thought some phosphorus would also help on the less rolling areas, where the alfalfa is not so good as where you found more phosphorus. Lime and raw rock phosphate make the difference between clover and no clover. I can get ground limestone for $2.90 a ton now, delivered at Blue Mound in bulk in carload lots. We are hoping to get it still lower, and I think we will, for some of the big lime manufacturers, such as the company at Riverton, are making plans to furnish ground limestone; and the railroad companies are likely to make better rates, or the State will do so for them. It is truly a lamentable situation, when our hills and mountains are full of all sorts of limestone, and our exhausted lands are crying for that more than anything else. We understand, even better than you, that everybody is poor in a country where the land is poor; and it should be to the greatest interest of the railroad companies as well as to all other industries, to unite in an effort to make it possible for every landowner to apply large amounts of limestone to his land,--the more the better,--and no one should expect any large profit from the business; but wait till the benefit is produced on the land,--wait till the farmer has his increased crops, and some money from the sale of those crops. Then the railroads can make profit hauling those crops to market and hauling back the necessary supplies, and even the luxuries, which the farmer's money will enable him to buy and pay for. Then the factory wheels will turn; for, as you told us, the Secretary of Agriculture reports that eighty-six per cent. of all the manufactured products are made from agricultural raw materials. There is no danger but what the railroads and manufacturers and commercial people will get their share out of the produce from the farms; but it is absolutely sure that, when the farms fail to produce, then there is no profit for any of them, and the last man to starve out will be the farmer himself, for he can live on what he raises even though he has nothing left to sell.