The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1909-06-18
NirRocEN.GATHERINc sAcTER-
IA: THEIR SHAPE IN FARM
FERTILITY
BY Dr. Howard s. Reed, OF the Poly
technIc Institute.

BY Or. Howard s. Reed, OF the Poly
technIc Institute.
The history of civilization has large
ly been record of mans ability to
subjugate the world. His first au-
thority was probably exercised over
inanimate objects like stones and logs,
which he learned to pile up for his
shelter and protection against the
elements. subsequently other objects
of wood and stone were obtained and
fashioned into the weapons of war and
of the chase. From early time man
kind has also been engaged in an at
tempt to harness the animate forms of
nature to his advantage At the early
dawn of civilization we find certain
animals in the service of mankind, such
as the horse and the dog. At later
period we find mankind owning
and raising herds of meat cattle. This
industry was largely the outcome of his
success in subjugating the horse and
to herd the cattle and reclaim straying
animals. 1t was much later before
man appears to have learned to cult.
vate, in a systematic way food giving
vegetables, and right down to our pre-
sent time the addition of new plants or
animals to mans domain has claimed
some of the most strenuous endeavors of
our Investigators.
1t is strictly in line with this subju-
gative side Of mans activity to press
into service the lower forms of life,
such as are popularity known as micro
bes, yeasts and fungi. In the short
space of twenty-five years our know
ledge of these organisms has increased
almost as rapidly as it was formerly
lacking 1t must not be imagined that
because these creatures are small their
powers for good or evil are any less than
those of the larger creatures. On the
contrary, many of them are closer to us
in welfare than any of the larger crea-
lures can possibly be which man has
subjugated, when we realize that my
riads of these organisms live within our
bodies, others exist in the food we take
in, while countless numbers inhabit the
atmosphere in which we live. The
study of these vastly important organ
isms like the study of man himself, is
one of the last things to which science
has turned its investigations.
SPINNING GOLD FROM STRAW.
The miller's unfortunate daughter in
the old fairy tale was allotted the task
of spinning straw into gold, and we are
told that the preposterous task was
finally accomplished by the interven-
ton of supernatural being, who had
the ability to set all things right. In
these days we have learned that the
myriads of bacteria in the soil are able
to accomplish results which seem almost
as preposterous as that of the miller's
daughter. To obtain fertility from the
atmosphere is one of the fairy tales of
science which has recently been shown
to occur. For long time it has been
known that the atmosphere contains
vast store of nitrogen in the gaseous
form, and it has been the ambition of
scientific men to utilize this nitrogen in
adding fertility to soil
When the rock-layers disintegrate to
form soil they ordinarily produce soil
which contains all of the ordinary ele-
ments required for plant food except
compounds of nitrogen for of this latter
class of bodies the rocks contain none.
Yet, when productive soils are analysed,
for example, the so.called virgin soils,
they are found to contain large quanti-
ties of heterogeneous material, as much
as 5000 to $1,000 pounds per acre, to a
depth of one foot. Chemists have been
unanimous in stating the fact that all
of this nitrogen has been derived in
someway from the large store of CASE
GUS nitrogen in the air.
LOSSES OF NITROGENOUS COMPOUNDS.
AS they become more skilled in analy-
tical methods, the chemists could not
remain blind to the fact which, indeed,
all farmers know from experience, that
there is constant drain upon the store
of nitrogen compounds in the soil. Con-
siderable amounts are removed by
growing plants; another part teaches
away into the rivers and ultimately
finds its way into the ocean, again, the
decomposition of humus transforms
some of the nitrogen into gaseous forms
which escape to the air. Here, then,
comes the puzzling problem. How does
this rock powder become the receptacle
OF enormous amounts of heterogeneous