Rural School Le.\flet. 



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analysis proved that it really did contain much of the same food material 

 as the more expensive meat diet which the poorer people could not 

 often afford. Working horses too, and other animals which are growing up 

 or being fattened for market, put on many pounds of solid meat when 

 they are fed on alfalfa hay, pea-meal, soja-beans (which are really a kind 

 of peas) and other leguminous plants. Split peas are also good food 

 for poultry. 



The wise farmer carefully saves all the manure from his stables 

 and poultry yards and puts the fertilizer so rich in nitrogen back on 

 the land to serve as food for more growing plants. Where does 

 the pea-plant and its relatives get the nitrogen which they store 

 away so plentifully in their fleshy seeds? Not altogether from the 

 soil, for not many soils are rich in nitrates and of all the fertilizers 

 which the farmer uses, those that are nitrogenous are the most 

 costly. But four-fifths of the atmosphere is nitrogen and it has Deen 

 discovered that leguminous plants can feed largely upon the nitrogen 

 of the air and store it up in their tissues as they grow. It is believed 

 that the plants are enabled to get this nitrogen through the activity 

 of the lower and very minute forms of life known as bacteria or microoes, 

 which can be seen only by the aid of the microscope. Just ho\> ihe 

 plants and bacteria work together is not fully known, but it is an estab- 

 lished fact that the family of Legumes not only do not exhaust the soil 

 as most other plants do in growing, but often leave it in better condition 

 than before the crop was sown. This is why the farmer plows under 

 his field of earl}'- dwarf pea-vines as scon as the crop is picked, and puts 

 in something else to grow, knowing that the decaying plants put back 

 into the soil as much or more fertilizing material than they removed 

 from it. Other plants of this family have even more of this beneficial 

 quality than the pea, but they are not at the same time a dainty food 

 for our tables, good provender for our herds and flocks, and a benefit 

 to the soil in which they grew. 



