228 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
constitution of this indigo dye, and had finally indicated some possible 
methods of synthesis. Notwithstanding all this, it took the Badische 
Aniline & Soda Fabrik about 20 years of patient research work, carried 
out by a group of eminent chemists and engineers, before a satis- 
factory method was devised by which the artificial product could 
compete in price and in quality with natural indigo. 
Germany, with her well-administered and easily enforcible patent 
laws, has added, through this very agency, a most vital inducement 
for pioneer work in chemical industries. Who otherwise would dare 
to take the risk of all the expenses connected with this class of 
creative work? Moreover, who would be induced to publish the 
result of his discoveries far and wide throughout the whole world in 
that steadily flowing stream of patent literature, which, much sooner 
than any textbooks or periodicals, enables one worker to be bene- 
fited and to be inspired by the publication of the latest work of 
others ? 
The development of some problems of industrial chemistry has 
enlisted the brilliant collaboration of men of so many different 
nationalities that the final success could not, with any measure of 
justice, be ascribed exclusively to one single race or nation; this is 
best illustrated by the invention of the different methods for the 
fixation of nitrogen from the air. 
This extraordinary achievement, although scarcely a few years 
old, seems already an ordinary link in the chain of common, current 
events of our busy life; and yet, the facts connected with this recent 
conquest reveal a modern tale of great deeds of the race—an epos of 
applied science. 
Its story began the day when chemistry taught us how indis- 
pensable are the nitrogeneous substances for the growth of all living 
beings. 
Generally speaking, the most expensive foodstuffs are precisely 
those which contain most nitrogen; for the simple reason that there 
is, and always has been, at some time cr another, a shortage of 
nitrogenous foods in the world. Agriculture furnishes us these 
proteid or nitrogen containing bodies, whether we eat them directly 
as vegetable products or indirectly as animals which have assimilated 
the proteids from plants. It so happens, however, that by our ill- 
balanced methods of agriculture we take nitrogen from the soil 
much faster than it is supplied to the soil through natural agencies, 
We have tried to remedy this discrepancy by enriching the soil with 
manure or other fertilizers, but this has been found totally insufficient, 
especially: with our methods of intensive culture—our fields want 
more nitrogen. So agriculture has been looking anxiously around to 
find new sources of nitrogen fertilizer. For a short time-an excellent 
supplv was found in the guano devosits of Peru: but this material was 
