The Hawaiian gazette., 1904-10-18
c.. II. D..

tates as have more or less "prh pu'
lands.
c. II. d.
Following is The Century's article:
.Did Won vaccinate your land this
YEAR," was the startling question
hoard one farmer ask another the other
day. We'll. ] guess" he replied. You
remember that corner field which
gave up as hopeless last year? Well,
when l heard about the yeast cakes the
government was giving free with the
promise that they'd make clover or al
falfa grow where we farmers couldn't
raise anything but weeds, ana thih
weeds at that | thought I'd send for
several of the cakes. When the cakes
came | vaccinated the field according
to Instructions planting 1T in alfalfa.
I tell you, I've had three whopplhg
crops. and I'VE got off that formerly
worthless field five times more than I've
been getting off my best land and I've
got some pretty good land, too
We have grown accustomed to the
idea of being vaccinated. Some OF our
most dread diseases have been van
quished or checked by incubation
smallpox, diphtheria, rabies, and, we
hope, the plague,-but to cure sterile
ground and make it bring forth fruit In
abundance by incubation is something
so strange and revolutionary that we
should not believe the statement were
IL not for convincing and irrefutable
facts.
Before explaining the discovery and
manner of this extraordinary process of
agricultural science. it might be well
40 review a few well-known facts in the
life of plants.
one of the most important elements
of the food of a plant is nitrogen, which
IL absorbs from the soil mainly through
its roots: successive crops of grain soon
drain the soil of it's pant-food, and in
process of time make the richest land
poor and worthless.
A good farmer partly balances the
drain on his soil by using plentiful
quantities of manure and fertilizer, and
thus puts back much of the nitrogen
which his crops remove.
We send to Chile, thousands of miles
away, for help. and at much expense
import from her thousands of tons of
costly nitrate, though we have all about
us-in the air we Observation-Disclosures
stores of fertilizer. Free nitrogen forms
seven tenths of the atmosphere. If we
could tap and use this sea of nitrogen,
we could fertiliZe the whole earth and
keep it rich; but it has been of no use
to us hitherto because we have had no
means of capturing it and of putting Ii
into the ground. Its simplicity has baf
fled us. Like the plenty that tormenteI
Tantalus, II has ever eluded our grasp.
We are taking the nitrogen from the
soil so much faster than we can put
II back that some persons have predict
ed nitrogen famine" at no distant
day, and have luridly described the hor-
rors that will fall upon us when the
soil becomes so poverty stricken that
eur crops of wheat and grain and rice
will fail to feed the nations. While this
view is of course partly imaginative,
and eXaggerates the nearness of the
danger, the fact remains that many
areas in England and Europe and the
eastern United States, formerly fertile,
are now unproductive because the nj
trogen in the soil has been exhausted
But now man has captured a tiny
germ invisible to the naked eye, which
can take from the boundless store of
the earth. for him.
Ever since the time of Plny, farmers
have noticed that after crop of peas.
alfalfa, or any of the leguminous plants.
heavier yield of wheat can be obtaip-
ed; thus has arisen the old profitable
rule Of rotation of crops,
But the reason certain plants enrich
the ground while others exhaust II re-
la. 4
German discovered some years ago that
peas, beans, etc, obtained their nitro
gen food not from the uitmtes I'm the
soil, but from the free supply In the
air. lie also discovered that these
plants absorbed much more nitrogen
than they could use ana left the surplus
in the soil That Is. beans peas ulfal-
IN, clover put back into the mother
earth what corn and wheat ana grains
remove. The manner in which they
DO this h unique ana another instance
81 the marvellous and mysterious laws
~ ~bich the balance Of nature b. MAIN
tHlnrd.
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glover plant afd rsamIura tho roots. hp
Wil trr "a number ~ rounded bulbs.
called modulus Ur fuNfr.'.H. 0u enc roots
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