The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-18
Prom the Chicago Tribune.

From the Chicago Tribune.
 The earth has a brain-a living, think ing brain-and the farmers and the wise acres are beginning to find 1t QUO; be- ginning to find out that Mother Earth brain can think for them.
 The soil is the home of unthinkable myriads of living beings, uncountable colonies of marvellous forms of life, at work necessarily, tho brains of the earth. and In some ways the least understood forces of the world.
 At the Kansas experiment station It was found that there were 1,6lS 6SO,S1O bacteria in a thimbleful of soil from one field and only a few over million in another field.
 Many different families of the bacteria live in the earth, making their homes in the soil They help to decompose It, thus transforming it into food. They draw vast stores of food supplies from the air. At every point they act as advance agents for mems interests.
 In a chemists laboratory was a pot filled with the depleted soil from a re- zion of exhausted land. A few spears of clover were pitifully struggling toward a starved maturity; yellow, stunted, thrlftless Alongside the same plant was pot filled with soil from the same re- zion, but It's plant was growing beati- fully green, tall. strong, thrifty, respect able. The soil had been inoculated with a colony of bacteria from another state.
 On much larger scale similar tests have been made. And the results on the larger scale are still more wonderful The Kansas Investigators were working with the soy bean, which Is a fine feeding crop. Long ago 1t was discovered that , certain plants, as tho beans, cloyers, peas, Vetch. alfalfa, and the like, form upon their roots little punches or tubercles, as they are called. Nobody knew what these punches were for and many thought they were harmful. Science sought out their meaning and found that the growths w.re necessary and that tho plants which did not have them were less thrifty than those which did. More thnn this, 1t was found that the growths were the home of a tiny organism, benefisent bacterium which working In some way yet shrouded in mystery, induced this en- largement upon the plant roots and made the bunch It's home.
 Still further investigation showed that the billions upon billions of bacteria in this little round home on the roots of the plant were actively at work for man. They performed their work with the ut most accuracy and skill, leaving nothing to chance or lucK but doing all under d systematic. judicious law
 The task of these bacteria Is to take the nitrogen from the mighty reservoir of the air, this four-ffths portion of the entire atmosphere, and, down in their tiny laboratories, In their homes beneath the surface of the earth, transform it. or adapt it, or change it from the nitrogen of the air into the nitrogen suitabl etc be taken up by the plant.
 The bacteria do not do thls work mere Iy to store up supplies of nitrogen for their own uses, the squirrel lays by its store of nuts for the winters fare. The bacteria take the nitrogen, transform it. and send it through the membranes of tho plant into the life tissue, the nitro gen enriching the plant, and at the same time enabling it. through it's many tubercles. to become d storehouse of ni- trogen well.
 IL so happens that In certain soils none of these particular bacterit is found'