348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We get potassa free from soda in the ash of a tree which grew in a 

 soil having more soda than potassa. From sea-water, containing 

 near 200 parts of soda to one of potassa, the sea-weeds furnish an asli 

 having two to twenty times more potassa than soda. From the blood 

 of man, having ten to fifteen times more soda than potassa, the 

 muscles obtain a composition of six or seven times more potassa than 

 soda. 



This gleaning is good proof of the value of more, and the evidence 

 is confirmed by the application of potassa as a fertilizer. The stock 

 of potassa which is used somewhat in the arts is derived mainly 

 from the gatherings of the organic world. The ash-wagon takes up 

 the savings of the hearth. In France the washings of sheep's-wool 

 are saved, and 160 pounds of good potassium carbonate are obtained 

 from a ton of the wool. In the pioneer life of this country, the house- 

 wives have burned corn-cobs and taken the ash for baking-powder, 

 eighty per cent, potassium carbonate, and preferable to the " dietetic 

 saleratus" npw used. Should the ash of the entire corn-crops of the 

 United States be taken without loss, it is estimated that over 100,- 

 000,000 pounds of jDotassium carbonate would be obtained. In the 

 salt-beds of Stassfurt, Germany, there is a good proportion of potas- 

 sa, and the use of this supply has been steadily increasing, both as 

 material in manufactures and as a fertilizer. 



At the present time, the market value of the resources of life 

 engages little general attention. There is a narrow branch of com- 

 merce, wherein the prices-current of the three elemental materials 

 which we have taken as "adequate resources" are the values con- 

 stantly under calculation in daily business. In this guild, one sells 

 nitrogen at thirty cents, another offers phosphoric acid at five cents; 

 and all parties have a tacit understanding that the values of nitrogen, 

 phosphoric acid, and potassa, are to each other about as six, one and 

 a half, and one, and that these are the only values to be considered. 

 The technical terms of any profession or pursuit are jargon to the 

 general ear. But hearing a man say that he " sold a hundred tons 

 of rectified Peruvian at thirty-one cents for nitrogen, this morning," 

 it is not so much as understood in what sort of business such jargon 

 belongs. 



Thinking of the multiplication of life and the waste of its resources, 

 it seems that, in the time coming, the phrases that tell the rise and 

 fall of value in commercial fertilizers may find some general recogni- 

 tion may even have as much meaning for everybody as the terms 

 of the gold-market and the silver-stocks. 



It is only about a hundred years since man began to attain such 

 definite knowledge of the components of matter as enables him to 

 trace (we by no means say to understand) the transmutations of earth 

 and air into tissues fit for life. Thirty-six years ago, Liebig com- 

 menced giving the people the first really systematic lessons upon the 



