EDITORIAL. 827 



through its support of normal schools, art schools, institutes of tech- 

 nology, and the agricultural col lent'. In order to secure proper 

 instruct ion for teachers in the elements of agriculture, it is suggested 

 thai a normal department be established in the State agricultural 

 college, instead <>f attempting to introduce the subject into normal 

 schools or establish a separate school for that purpose. 



The recommendations of this commission are embodied in ;i l>ill sub- 

 mitted to the legislature, which provides for the appointment of a 

 commission on industrial education to promote this work, and proposes 

 State aid to towns and cities for the maintenance of distinctive schools 

 for industrial training, or of industrial courses in high or manual 

 training schools. The hearings on this bill before the legislative 

 committees have attracted much attention, and developed widespread 

 interest in favor of the measure. 



The notable progress which has recently been made in the develop- 

 ment of commercially successful method- of fixing the free nitrogen 

 of the air, and thus making it available for agricultural and other 

 industrial purposes, should go far toward reassuring those who are 

 disposed to view with alarm the rapid exhaustion of the world'- prin- 

 cipal known supply of combined nitrogen, namely, the nitrate deposits. 



The rapidly increasing demand (which has risen from less than 

 200,000 tons of nitrate in L870 to over 1,500,000 tons in L905) and the 

 steadily diminishing supply have stimulated unusual activity in 

 efforts to apply the discoveries of science to the solution of the great 

 industrial problem of finding a practical means of maintaining a 

 cheap and reliable supply of fixed nitrogen. 



The encouraging results yielded by the Frank and Caro calcium 

 cyanamid process have already been referred to (E. S. R., 15, p. 123). 

 Further developments in the application of this process have fully 

 justified the promise of the earlier trials, and factories have been built 

 in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere to test the process on an extensive 

 commercial basis. The numerous experiments which have been made 

 to test the fertilizing value of the so-called lime nitrogen (Kalkstick- 

 xtoff) prepared by this process indicate that when used with proper 

 precautions and under certain restrictions the product has a fertiliz- 

 ing value in general but slightly inferior to that of nitrate of soda 

 and somewhat superior to that of sulphate of ammonia. The results 

 of hundreds of such experiments on a great variety of soils and crops 

 are given in a recent 120-page report issued at Rome, which i- briefly 

 noted elsewhere. 



Improvements are constantly being made which increase the effi- 

 ciency of the process and lessen the COSt of the product, and which 

 encourage the belief that where cheap water power i> available this 



