Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1904-09-28
THE inpoaTascg OF BACTERIA.
Bacterial Life Contains the Secret Of Nitro.
gea Production.

uoaIh Ol VeSetaClOn must ultimately
ensue. For that reason we add the
necessary nitrogen to the titled soil
in the form of fertilizers. Ithappens,
however, that the supply of fertili-
zers, which in turn is dependent
upon the supply of nitrates in the
world, is limited. Like the coal
fields of Pennsylvania, the nitrate
beds from which nitrogen compounds
are obtained must ultimately be ex-
hausted. And because the free ME
trogen of the air in its elemental
state cannot be assimilated by vege-
tation, it is no wonder that the agri-
cultural chemist has taken it upon
himself to devise some means for re-
storing to the earth the nitrogen
which it must give up to the growing
plant, and without which the plant
could not grow.
Just how the nitrogen of the air
could be converted into nitrates
suitable for fertilization is a problem
that has been attacked time and time
again with scant success. Crookes
proposed plan not without merit,
a plan by which the nitrogen Of the
air was converted into nitric acid
through the agency of the electric
spark.
For centuries farmers have known
that different crops should be grown
in the same field with each succeed
ing year. Some crops following
clover and other plants were found
to flourish admirably. Careful analy-
ses by agricultural chemists have
shown that the benefits derived by
this rotation are due directly to the
increased stores of nitrogen placed
at the disposal of the benefited
plants. 1t would necessarily have
followed that plants of the clover
type were able to render available
nitrogen which would otherwise be
unassimilated. Further investiga-
tion showed that this nitrogen was
fixed inra manner entirely unsus-
pected, and that we need have no
fear of the exhaustion of the nitrate
beds which supply US with the chief
ingredients of our fertilizers.
The Leguminosie family of plants,
among other distinctions, have we'll
defined nodules at their roots, highly
charged with nitrogen and consti-
tu,ing the habitat of certain bacteria
indispensable in nitrogen assimila-
tion. Elaborate experiments proved
that the destruction of these bacte-
ria was equivalent to the destruction
of the plant life itself. Bacterial
life, then, and nothing else, contains
the secret of nitrogen production. 1t
having been settled with reasonable
certainty that the fxation of nitro
gen in the case of Leguminosiae is
directly traceable to bacteria, the
next investigation to be carried out
had for its determination the life
process of these bacteria-the con-
ditions under which they thrive, the
amount of light, heat, and moisture
that they require, the manner in
which the plant appropriated the nj
trogen brought to it from the air,
and finally, the possibility of artifi-
cially stimulating plant life by inocu-
lating soil with the bacteria. These
Investigations have been carried out
with striking success. At no very
distant day the farmer viii! either in
ocuiate his field with q culture of
bacteria adapted to the crop he
wishes to grow, or incorporate with
his soil earth of a field where the
crop has already been successful.
The uncertainty of good crop will
then have vanished, and farmer
will be assured of the best obtaina-
bic crops from the seed which he has
planted. Guesswork will have given
place to absolute certainty.-Scien-
tifc American.