The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1884-10-10
Cloudy Chemistry.

talk correctly-and the reporters. il
thems elves ignorant of the subject,
should get the speakers whom they re-
port to prepare their own abstracts of
what they say. for perhaps it is some
times the reporter who is to blame Tor
the remarkable chemistical feasts
with which we are occasionally re-
called. To illustrate: A speaker at a
rec mt meeting of the Massachusetts
| horticultural society is made to say
! that nitrogen is not plant food, but a
I solvent all of which is sheer nom
sense, except the final statement that
nitrogen is not plant food.
! At another meeting OF the same
well known society, the same speaker
IS reported to have said that sin the
cellular structure of plants every cell
is enveloped in tissue composed of
NITROGEN which is about as close
tissue of error. botanical and chemical,
as could well be crowded into so small
space. Again. he speaks of the ex-
cellent effect of coal ashes in extracting
nitrogen from filthy waters, the nitro
gen turning first into ammonia, then
/ Into nitric acid, and then into soluble
nitrates which wash away. Verify,
! the DAYS of the old alchemlsts must be
coming again, if one substance can be
! 'turned into" another in this style;
and all this appears in one of Boston's
best known papers.
| Now what is this nitrogen. about
which so much is said ard written for
the farmers benefit In these d8vs when
SO many more farmers think that such
things are worth reading about than in
days when we older men were small
boys' 1t is a perfectly inactive and
harmless gaseous substance 1t makes
up almost four-fifths of the ar that we
breathe: its evident purpose there is
| to tone down the action OF The oxygen
which makes up the remaining one
| fifth; and it serves this purpose Just be-
cause it is SO utterly without any effect
on even the most delic3re tissue or
sensitive fluid of plant or animal; and
| tn 8 is what is said to make waters
filthy!
To talk nitrogen clouds" in the up
yer part of the atmosphere, washed
down by rains, is an absilrdlty. Clouds
in our atmosphere are due to the con-
densation of water. which also in
gaseous and invisible form is always
present there, into q visible form BY q
| toAi III tChbCiatuiOt hO laii III
ture that is even within mans power
to br ng about by artificial means, very
much less any fall naturally occurring
in the air, can make cloud out of nj
trogen. Again, there is no more nitro
gen where the clouds are than ut the
surface of the earth; and even if there
were it would not be washed down by
the rams, because rainwater can at the
most take up only very little OF it;
and even if it were washed down it
would be Of no use TO the farmer.
Nitrogen is what chemists know as
an elementary substance, since by no
operation, however powerful that they
can sub ect it to, can they break it up
or decompose it into two or more other
substances unlike ITSELF In this free,
elem. ntary state, it has not, so far as
our positive knowledge extends at pres
ent, any agricultural significance or
use whatever for the production of
crops. Though it can not be broken up
into new substances, it can be made to
10 in chemical combination with other
elementary substances, such as hydro
gen, oxygen or carbon. etc., and form
The compound substances so often
named IN agricultural chemical writing,
ammonia. nitric acid or nitrates, pro-
ten or albuminoids, heterogeneous mat
tiers and so on.
In these conditions nitrogen is of the
utmost agricultural Importance, and
becomes more and more useful to the
farmer, Just in proportion Is he knows
how to handle it make it serve his pur-
pose. In the form OF animal refuse, or
other waste heterogeneous matters all OF
which are mostly wasted protein or al
7umino DIS. or in the shape of nitrates or
ammonia compounds, he uses It to
make his crops grow; in the protein of
| his crops he uses it TO make meat or
milk: and finally wnen he can work up
/ its compounds no further, that
is when he has got rs much
of it as possible back from the
vast protein of his manure into the
protein or albuminoid5 of the grain or
milk, wool or meat that he sells. he
would find on going into the chemistry
of the matter that this nitrogen con-
s.itutes the chief. or aJ least very I'M
portant part, OF the money value OF
these nished products of his farm.
| Chemical decompositionS and re-
combinations, or this chemical play
Ginning ogether IN some form or COM
bnatiOn with each other, and brou hit
about by the power of the sun in the
presence of certain degree of mois-
tn e is the very foundation of crop pro-
duction IL begins with sprouting of
seed or tuber, or any other wakin up
OF plant activity in spring, and does
not stop for an instant till the crop is
harvested; and then, even, it may con-
| tinue to feeble extent but the less the
letter. If it was possible that the car
bon. oxygen. hydro en- or nitrogen
| should suffer even but very small
alteration in the chemical properties.
bv which the sun would los. any OF his
power over its combinations, a disas-
trous disturbance in crop production
might follow, worse than any ect of
| drought or invasion of inse t, pest or
| disease.
The farmer is really the intelligent
| agent for bringing these chemi al COM
poands together under such conditions
of sunshine and soil that this great
chemi al work can go on AgIicul-
tural chemistry is the science thIt at
tempts to learn all about the chara ter
of this work. aud how be to make it
move on vigorously and successfully to
the end; if acquaintance with any
science can be useful to the agricultur-
ist, certainly this can be. ike every
science, this one must ha e its own pc
culiar names for the things it deals
| ,....I, o,,I nx.yr ,ao,,iiar -tat