Los Angeles herald., 1907-08-28
Bread From Stones-CIoth From Air

potash available for use in commercial
fertilizers comes from the mines in
Germany. The supply there is practi-
cally inexhaustible, but the processes
of mining are expensive, the demand is
heavy, and the prices have scared to the
skies.
Granite, for example, not often carries
more than per cent of potash. A cubic
foot of this stone weighs about 10 pounds
OF this there is eight and a half pounds
of potash. A quarry 100 feet square and
100 feet deep would yield S5O0,000 pounds
of potash. This can be produced at less
than half the price of German potash, 1t
lis claimed. There is no effort to separate
the potash from the granite The whole
rock is ground into a fine powder, and this
powder is spreau on the land. Expert
ments were made with tobacco, a plant
which requires much potash. In the
greenhouses there were three beds, one
to which feldspar was applied, another to
which carbonate of potash was supplied,
and another to which no potash was
added. The feldspar bed produced the
best results. Experiments carried on in
tobacco fields in Connecticut and Florida,
side by side with plants in which other
potash fertilizers were used, proved sue
cessful. The work is being carried for
ward, and it is believed by many scien-
lists that the granite mountains will soon
be levied upon for a small part of their
rocky hearts to be usedin revivifying the
depleted soil of the farms.
The nitrate beds of C.Ai have cost the
world a flood of blood poured out in a
war for their possession, and the desert
each year claims a heavy toll of human
life. Antofagasta, lac nitrate metropolis,
is the hottest, dreariest and dustiest of
towns. Its water supply comes through
an aqueduct 1S0 miles in length-the long
est in the world. High up on the blis-
tered hillside the white stone of an over
grown graveyard flash in the sun as If
to signal the deserts warning and its
challenge. New Hampshire's White
mountains are more generous and will
give up their granite stone peacefully and
unbegrudgingly.
Potash, to be of use in the soil, must be
dissolved in water. A block of granite
does not dissolve easily, as any child
knows, therefore it must be reduced to
the finest possible powder before it can
be used as a fertilizer. Again science is
only initiating nature An oak tree grow
ing on a rock ridge where there is almost
no soil uses more potash for food than
anything else. 1t takes it from the felds-
pathic rocks by the same means that the
crushing mill makes the plant food avail
able by grinding the rocks to powder.
Even the impalpable powder will not re-
lease it's potash in water to any great ex-
tent unless each particle of potash Is re-
moved as soon as 1t is freed, and this is
exactly what the roots of the plants do.
The oak tree takes the potash that is
freed from the dissolving granite and
makes way for more. But an oak tree
takes a long time to grow, and science
must needs furnish the farmer with pot
ash available for a plant that requires
but few months to reach maturity.
AS an example of the profit in the busi-
ness the field at Mount Pleasant, Tenn, |
may be cited. The phosphate found there
is the remains of the bones of the fishes
caught up in an arm of the sea In some
great convulsion of nature before the
dawn of the era of man. The bed is from
two to ten feet thick and lies under the
surface of one of the richest agricultural |
sections of ne country, called by local
poet "the dimple of the universe, The |
community which has devoted itself for |
a century to the peaceful pursuit OF agri- |
culture, was turned into a mining camp |
over night. Citizens dug up their front
yards moved their houses and dug under
Them One little college dug enough phos-
phate from the campus to erect new
buildings entirely, and churches had, the
same experience. Men who had counted
themselves well-to-do farmers, worth s75.-
900, found themselves worth a million.
The boom soon vanished, but the indus |
try is still there. Most of this rock, |
which is very high in phosphates, Is
shipped to Europe for consumption.
When the phosphate rock is taken out
the surface dirt which was thrown behind
is leveled down and there is the old farm
the same as ever, except that 1t Is few
feet lower than it was before, and the
particles of phosphate brought to the air
have decomposed and the land is much
richer than ever. 1t is like no other min
ing community in the world in appear
ance. The supply there is limited, and 1t
is believed that after a few years, the
Mount Pleasant field will again be
peaceful farming community and the
screech of the whstling dummy engines
will be heard no more.