The Republican journal., 1905-03-30
vaCcinating the Ground.

The up-to-date farmer no longer
spends hundreds of dollars annually in
buying fertilizers for his acres. Instead,
he sends to the Department of Agricul-
ture in Washington and receives lit
tie package of bacteria and with these
he vaccinates his soil, enables his
plants to draw their nitrogen from the
air instead of from the ground, and in
creaSeS his crops from 100 to 1000 per
cent.
What this invention means in dollars
and cents to the country at large and to
the farmer in particular is something
almost beyond computation. Imagine
each acre of wheat and each acre of po-
tatoes, following the crop of inoculated
legumes, producing as many bushels as
two acres formerly produced. Imagine
each acre of peas, Of beans, of clover,
of vetch and of alfalfa producing as
much as ten acres formerly produced.
Imagine the increase in the income of
the farmer. Imagine the decrease in
the price of food stuffs for the general
consumer. Imagine thousands upon
thousands of acres that have been
abandoned because of worked out"
far greater than ever.
Nothing experimentative remains
about the application of these bacteria.
The invention is settled and practicable
beyond dispute, for the United States
Agricultural Department itself says so.
Farmers throughout sections in the en-
tire land have experimental with the
bacteria during the past two years and
the results have proved simply marvel.
Gus. From two to twenty-fold crops
have been grown on these vaccinated
lands. Worthless, barren ground, liter
ally too poor to grow weeds, has been
vaccinated and made to produce crops
four times as large as those taken from
the average unvaccinated soils. Here
ale few specific instances:
A field of poor ground was divided in
to halves, and one of the halves was
vaccinated by the new method. The
untreated half of the field produced
only POO pounds of clover to the acre.
The inoculated field produced 2O00
pounds to the acre.
Similarly, two fields of vetch were ex-
perimented with, the untreated patch
yielding 5S1 pounds and the treated
patch 4,501 pounds to the acre, OF
an increase of almost per cent,-a
single vaccinated acre producing as
much as eight unvaccinated acres.
Again, adjacent fields were treated
and left untreated, the soils producing
respectively 6,292 and 372 pounds OF
crimson clover to the acre. In other
words, the vaccination repaid very
nearly $50 for 81.
A Maryland farmer, who had been
obliged to abandon twO-thirdS of his
farm because it was worked out" in
creased his output 500 per cent, simply
by vaccinating his soils. Scores of sim
ilarly abandoned farms were reclaimed.
To understand the simple principle
of this revolution in agriculture it is
necessary only to bear in mind that
nitrogen is one of the chief foods of
plants. Potash, iron, ETC., a plant must
have to thrive, but nitrogen is one Of
the most important of all the elements
in plant diet.
Ordinarily. plants take their nitrogen
out of the ground through the medium
of their roots, and each successive crop
draws on the nitrogen supply of the
soil, so that, unless the drain is balanc-
ed by putting back just SO much of the
valuable food, the ground will become
lean and poor and, eventually, useless.
Up to now, the method of putting back
! the nitrogen exhausted by the crops
has been by using fertilizers. Every
fall and spring, the farmers carried hun
dredS Of loads of costly manure, spread
ing it with untold labor Guano he
spreads, and expensive fertilizers cost
ing from $50 to SIS ton. He even had
to scatter nitrate of soda (saltpeter,
shipped more than a thousand miles,
all the way from Chill. In fact, so alb
SOluteiy necessary were these soil i'll
vigoratOrs and so extensively had they
to be used that today practically ali the
guano beds of the world have been ex-
hausted, and the visible supply of salt
peter is so limited that, according to
the present rate of consumption, it can
last no longer than fifty years; after
which, according to science, scarcity of
crops and-tamine.
And now, in the nick of time, along
comes tiny, invisible, friendly germ,
offering to work for us free of charge
and to supply nitrogen as quickly as
our crops can use it up if only we will
treat him railway decen tly.
HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE.
From earliest times it has been
recognized that most exhausted soils,
if permitted to rest for few seasons,
would regain their fertility. Only COM
paratively recently, however, was it
learned that what really enriches these
soils is form of soil bacteria which
has the faculty of drawing nitrogen
from the surrounding air and, by stor-
ing it up, rendering it available for
plant food. Also, ever since the time
of Pliny it has been known that the
leguminous, or pod bearing, plants, like
peas, beans, etc., did not require the
same amount Of fertilizer necessary
for other plants. More, these plants,
instead Of drawing from the soil, act
ually enriched it by taking an excess
of nitrogen from the air and storing it
up i'll the ground for the benefit of other
kinds of crops. This is what gave rise
to the modern method of rotating crops,
although why the 1eguminous and not
the other plants should have this
faculty, was. a mystery. 1t was never
suspected that these pod bearing plants
had particular attraction for the soil
bacteria, and that here they congregat-
ed in such numbers that they might
readily be procured 1t had been
noticed that the roots of these legumes
grew numbers of nodules, varying in
size from pin-head to a potato, but
these were supposed to be due to bites
from worms and insects. Not until