22 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIEyCE. 



One 1,000th part of antimony in copper will destroy its value for many com- 

 mercial purposes. 



Steel is perhaps; as sensitive to small quantities of carbon as any metal 

 that can be mentioned. Look at that strong boiler plate: it is made of a 

 steel that contains perhaps two-tenths of 1 per cent, of carbon. This kinfe is 

 made of a steel that contains perhaps eight-tenths of 1 per cent. But it 

 would be impracticable to make a boiler plate out of this knife steel. 



"We arc all more or less familiar with the substance known as gold leaf. 

 Gold is the most malleable of metals, so that if I pile up 200,000 leaves of gold 

 one above another the pile will be only one inch high. It is so thin that it 

 floats almost in the air, yet really the metal is 19.5 times as heavy as water. 

 If then I have a vessel of water on this table that weighs 100 pounds the 

 sam3 vessel filled with gold would weigh 1,950 pounds, or almost a ton. 



Gold is very susceptible to a small amount of impurity. One part in 

 2,000 would make it so brittle that a bar of it would be readily broken with 

 a hammer. This is in the face of the fact as I stated that it is when pure 

 the most malleable of metals. Our predecessors, the alchemists, understood 

 the wonderful effect of a small quantity of another metal upon this precious 

 metal, and is it any wonder that they sought to find a philosopher's stone 

 that would change a common metal to gold? 



A large amount of work has recently been done on the micro-organisms 

 of the soil; those infinitesimal creatures that have their home and do their 

 work in tiie darkness beiow the surface of the earth. Some of these bacteria 

 are \ery curious in their habits as well as very small. There is one, for 

 instance, that actually needs carbonate of iron in order to keep in good grow- 

 ing condition. It gives off oxygen that it has abstracted from the iron com- 

 pound. We hear much just now of the great corporations swallowing the 

 railroads, but given an unlimited cycle of years, as our geologists say, and 

 an iclinite number of bacteria, and they will also swallow the railroads — at 

 least the rails. 



You have perhaps heard also of those wonderful "nitrifying ferments," 

 which have been so successfully studied by Warrington and by Winegrawdski. 

 One of these is an organism which can grow and work in the dark in material 

 that actually contains no organic material. Here it can produce organic 

 bodies, using the ammonia of the soil and the carbon of the carbonates. 

 Another ferment has the power to change the organic nitrogen of the soil to 

 ammonia. 



The agricultural chemist will tell you of organisms that actually add 

 nitrogen to the soil. Though there is an abundance of nitrogen in tke air, in 

 fact four-fifths of the air in this room is nitrogen, yet most plants have not 

 the ability to use it. The leguminous plants, however, are an exception to 

 this rule; but they cannot do the work without calling to their aid some of 

 those little bacteria that I mentioned. Did you ever notice the knotted 

 root of the clover? It is supposed that these ttibercles or knots are pro- 

 duced by exterior infection. In fact this is proved by the simple test of at- 

 tempting to grow lupines in a soil of pure sand. They will starve; but if the 

 plants are watered with a fresh extract made from lupines, then the little 

 tubercles will be produced and they have the power to assimilate the nitrogen 

 from the air, and the plants will thrive. 



It is well known, to those who have kept apace with what is going on in 

 the agricultural world, that not only is the farmer under obligations to cue 

 microscopic forms of life for the fertility of his soil, but in the domestic 



