The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1909-09-01
Edited by r. Walden

thing to do is to open the front gate
and unchain the bull dog and watch
the fellow strike the high places in
the road.
The other day on the street car
met man who wanted to talk on
fruit growing, so he began to fire
questions at me. When l told him
that apples would color in some To-
calities much better than in some
others, he replied by making this
statement: 'Why, don't you know
that everything that enters into the
growth of an apple tree and the for
nation of the fruit comes out of the
ground, and if you have the right
things in the ground you can grow
just as good apples and just as highly
colored as anybody can-location has
nothing to do with the natter
wonder how many people entertain
such notions. l informed this man
and am now trying to inform our read
ers that one-half of all the dry matter
that enters into the structure of all
vegetable growth never enters the
ground at all. When [ made this
statement to my man his eyes stood
open and I suspect that he thought
that some asylum for the insane had
lost one of it's inmates. But this man
only voiced a very common notion
about the source of fertility, viz, that
it is all in the SOIL
Now, our works in botany and plant
life tell us that ten elements are alb
solutely essential to the growth of
,11o Mt Of thncn ic 10 O1yino
plants will not live. Nine of these
enter the plant through the ground
and must be in the liquid form to do
SO. Then some one may want to say
that nine-tenths enter the plant
through the soil. That is true SO far
as number is concerned. But some
of these elements are needed in very
small quantities. This is true of sui
phur, magnesium and iron. The one
thing that does not enter the plant
through the ground except to very
limited extent is carbon. Now small
amount of carbon is produced by the
processes of fermentation and decay
going on in the SOIL and a very little
of this may enter the plant through
the roots, but the principal source of
carbon is the air.
To make this matter clear, I will
make some quotations from two scien-
tific works. I quote first from Per-
cival in his work entitled "Agricul-
tural Botany" pages 20S and 2O9, as
| follows "Fhe source from which
plants obtain the large quantity of
carbon of which more than half their
dry weight consists, has been the sub
ject of extensive investigation for a
long time Extended and carefully
conducted investigations have proved
beyond doubt that the chief food
material utilized by green plants for
their carbon supply is the carbon di-
oxide of the air, and that this gas is
absorbed by means of the leaves.
Moreover, it is through the stomata
Openings in the leaves) that the gas
enters into the tissues and only in
slight degree, if at all, through the
cuticle of the epidermal cells"
Gray, in his admirable work on
Botany says: "It is computed that an
average leaf of an apple tree has on
it's lower face about 100000 of these
mouths" Sorauer, in his great work
on "Plant Physiology" page 81, says:
"In the case of carbon, however,
which must be looked upon as the
chief constituent of vegetable tissues,
forming as it does one-half of their
total dry weight, the soil is of no use to
the plant as a source of this element.
The atmosphere. however, which sur
rounds the plant affords it all the car
bon which it requires. The leaves alb
sorb carbon from the air in the form
of carbonic acid, and decompose the
latter in their cells under the infiu-