The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-22
BACTERIA PROVE AN AID.
CULTURE OF THEM IMPROVE
 WORN OUT LANDS.

Seh VI NitE0Een-SIOry or Inc
 Bacteria Experiments-what the
 Bacteria Do for the Land-Dinercnt
 Crops Demand Different Organisms.
 The experiments now under way by the department of agriculture at wash ington in the treatment of worn-out lands by cultures of bacteria have 50 far shown satisfactory results. Re ports from the south now coming in have given the officials of the depart ment much encouragement and show that the little organisms are doing the work set out for them quietly and effee- lively by increasing the productiveness of the soil in which they are dtssemi- mated from twenty-five to fifty per cent. They are taking the place of the hired hands, as it were, for through their use fields which were barren and profitless without a prodigious amount of labor and fertilizers are now made to yield crops.
 Pr. B. T. Galloway, chief of the bu- reau of plant industry of the depart ment of agriculture, who is store house of information on the mysteries of plant life, talked interestingly to the correspondent of the News on this sub ject a few days ago, reviewing at length the method pursued by the de- partment in breeding these organisms and the effect of their employment by farmers in rehabilitating exhausted lands. Dr. Galloway said: About one hundred million dollars worth of .nitro- gen is sent out of the country every year in our principal export crops. Wheat, cotton, oats and barley carry away the principal supply of this ex- ceedingly valuable material. For years the system of cropping in this country has been such as to rob the soil of it's nitrogen, and this is especially true of the south, where the one-crop system has depleted the soil to a deplorable ex tent. In more recent years the south ern people have come to recognize the advantage of green manures, such as cowpeas, cloyers, the velvet bean. vetches, and so forth, in enriching the soil; but it is only very recently that the reason why these crops act.so ben officially has been thorough under stood. All the crops mentioned have the power of gathering nitrogen from the air, storing 1t up in their roots, and then giving it up to the soil again, so tha other crops may utilize 1t. There is a great abundance of free nitrogen in the air, and so far the only successful method of utilizing it has been through the use of the plants mentioned. The other sources of nitrogen are found in the use of various chemicals, such as nitrate of soda, guano and so forth As the supply of these fertilizers becomes depleted the cost of nitrogen is grow ing greater and greater, so that any thing having a tendency to make prac- ticable the securing the nitrogen from the large amounts present in the at mosphere is of intense interest to all agriculturists.
 Recently the department of agri- culture at Washington has been inves- tigating the nitrogen-gathering organ isms which live on the roots of the va rious clover crops, beans and So forth, and to which their power of gathering nitrogen IS due. These little organisms are living beings and by their growth on the roots of the plants in question serve the purpose of gathering the ni- trogen from the air. Without them the planters could not gather the nj trogen. Dr. George T. Moore, mem Der of the staff of the bureau of plant industry, after much effort, has sue #ceeded in devising a method of grow ing these organisms entirely outside of the plants, propagating them for a while in the laboratory and then send ing them out to farmers, by whom they can be utilized in inocculating the soil. This inocculation process Is done through the medium of the seed. A farmer, for example, who has cowpeas to SOW, sends to the department in Washington and secures a small quan- tity of the organisms direct from the laboratory. He is also sent two small packages of chemicals, one of salts, containing the mixture of sugar, potas- sium sulphate and magnesium sul- phate, and the other simply ammonium sulphate. This mixture of salts is carefully dissolved in water, and the small package of sterilized cotton, con- taining the nitrogen altering bacteria, is placed in the solution. Tn about .twenty-four hours the other package of salts, ammonium sulphate, is added, and the whole is then allowed to re main in a warm place for twenty or twenty-four hours. At the end of that time the solution is milky, showing that the bacteria or nitrifying organ isns, which were dropped in the nutri- tive preparation, have grown enor- mously. With this material the farmer the seed by simply sprink- ling the solution on the seed, the latter having been previously spread on the barn floor.
 ''The philosophy of all this is that the millions of bacteria. are brought into contact with the seed, and just as soon as the first rootlet appears the organisms begin their work of gather ing nitrogen from the air and storing it up in the root tissues. An examina- tion of these roots later on shows little swellings from the size of a pea to the size of hazelnut, and each of these contains millions of organisms exceed ingly ripe in nitrogen. The advantage of this system is shown from the fact