No. 7. DEPARTMENT PF AGRICUl-TURE, 221 



wanted to ask you if the process of extracting nitrate from the 

 air was likely to prove a success. You know we have several plants 

 for that purpose at present. 



PROF. HARSHBERGER:! don't quite understand. 



MR. NELSON: The process of extracting nitrates from the air — 

 is it likely to prove a success commercially? 



PROF. HARSHBERGER: I can't answer that question, I have 

 not followed the details of that. 



MR. NELSON: You know they have a plant in Norway and there 

 are one or tw^o more in the process of erection for that purpose; it 

 seems that their greatest difficulty is in the storage. 



MR. HALLO WELL: When I first started farming, I remember 

 there was an old machine out in the loft and I didn't know what 

 it was, and the landlord was there one day and I asked him what 

 it was, and he said, "Why don't you know what that is? That is 

 a clover huller." When I look back to my boyhood days and think 

 about the methods of farming then, and since I have seen this chart 

 and seen how we have been deceived on seed, I have come to the 

 conclusion that that has a good deal to do with our catch of clover. 

 Our seed has been adulterated, and adulterated so that probably 

 we sow more seed that don't grow than that that does. 



A Member: Mr. Chairman, in my locality an application of wood 

 ashes where there has been no clover sown for perhaps five years 

 (W more, will almost invariably bring in a good field of clover. 



PROF. HARSHBERGER: I think that would naturally follow 

 (he application of potash in almost any form. 



MR. NELSON: I have noticed a peculiar phenomenon. Being in- 

 terested in bees, I got some bacteria with sweet clover seed several 

 years ago and I find it is indigenous to this country; if it is sowed, 

 it will grow in a square block or in little patches, and yet in soil 

 down at a certain tunnel, I find that these seeds will germinate and 

 grow in disintegrated rock, and I wonder why. 



PROF. HARSHBERGER: I don't know why. 



MR. BOND: Out in my neighborhood, there is some sweet clover 

 growing wild and there is something very peculiar about it. I have 

 been trying to cultivate it without success. It grows under the 

 most unfavorable conditions very luxuriantly. I had some photo- 

 graphs taken for my friend Seeds, where it grows right on top of 

 the cupola of an old blast furnace. I counted there from a single 

 seed stool, thirteen stems averaging from five to eight feet high; 

 it is growing with a growth of from five to eight feet right on the 

 center of the slag bank where there is nothing but the slag of that 

 furnace for twelve feet deep and yet it refuses to grow under favor- 

 able conditions. 



MR. SEEDS: I have been growing that on my farm and I have 

 got some seed from it and I am going to sow it again. 



