Norwich bulletin., 1921-09-30

of farm manure or any bought ferti- lizer except little cheap raw rock phos- phate and little cheaper ground lime stone. And you mean to say that bacteria were doing the rest?" That's precisely what am trying to say.
 Let's Took into the thing little. What Is 1t bacteria do in the soil? And how can they make fertility? We'll they don't make fertility" They simply render existing fertility available to the plants. How do they do it?" Don't ] ask me don't know, any more than I know how, when I eat and swallow a beefsteak. my insides go at it and turn | 1t into blood and bone and muscle and | fat and heat and energy and several other things which enable me to live and 1 work.
 l They ds it.. That's the plain, blunt | fact which we plain. blunt farmers can l understand and take advantage off we're bright and quick enough. Let the scientific gentleman talk iearnediy about 1 ''netabolisn" and other isrs. You and I know that our interior machinery which is entirely beyond our own control twill rnA1oe over that beefsteak into blood and flesh and bona, and enable us to do our work. We're permitted to take that comforting fact and use it, leaving the how" and the .'why" for wiser philosophers to null over.
 Let's go back to the beginning-or as near 1t as we can get
 l When God made the air he made it of about four parts pure nitrogen and one part oxygen. That is, 1t is eighty per cent. nitrogen. The best nitrate of soda is only about twenty per cent. nj. trogen Ane nitrogen Is one of the ab- solute essentials for plant food. This has long been understood. Naturally, men who knew 1t asked, ''Why buy from far-oh Chllt nitrate of soda which is only one-ffth nitrogen, when the air that is all around us is four-hfths nitrogen The answer was. at the time. that we didn't know how to get the nitrogen out of the air cheaply enough to make 1t an economical fertilizer.
 Whersupon Messrs. the Bacteria stuck up their heads and remarked: ''We'u do it for you. and for nothing. That's our job"
 It is now well known that certain plants of the sort called ''legumes" by the learned clover, alfalfa, peas, beans, etc-haye on their roots under favor able circumstances, a great number of little knots or modules inhabited by in- numerable nations of bacteria whose spe cial amusement 1t is to sift and winnow | the nitrogen out of the air, work 1t over and fill the soil with it in the very form most readily available for plants to live on.
 Right there, then, is the solution of the nitrogen problem. Whats the use of buying it when. if you'll only treat your bacteria like a white man and give them their fair chance, they'll pull It out of the air for you, and not charge you a red cent for either nitrogen or labor?
 But, you'll say, nitrogen is only one of the three essential elements of plant food How about potash, for instance? l Go back to the beginning, again, if you please. When the same great Gre 1 ator Who made the air mixed up the granite rocks which are the source of the soil in Eastern Connecticut, He put into | them a very considerable amount of pot ash. Then He set His agents of rain and frost and heat and erosion to work disintegrating and decomposing those rocks. He drove His mile deep glaciers across them, blaming and scraping and gridding, till the debris was made into soil-into soil retaining, mind you. all the pure potash originally contained in the granite rocks of which it was made
 In the granite-derived soils of Eastern Connecticut and other like regions, tests show the existence of from fifteen tC thirty-five tons of potash per acre-pure
 potash, mind you.
 Again the question rises: Why buy
 high-priced potash from Germany wher
 your own soil is chuck-full of it? The
 answer used to be: Because that in the
 soil isn't in a form available to plants @ They can't get at it. There might al