INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY—BAEKELAND. 241 
world is attributable to a large extent to our rather one-sided system 
of agriculture. We do not sufficiently take advantage of the fact 
that certain plants, for instance those of the group of Leguminose, 
have the valuable property of easily assimilating nitrogen from the 
air, without the necessity of nitrogen fertilizers. In this way the 
culture of certain Leguminosz can insure enough nitrogen for the 
soil, so that, in rotation with nitrogen-consuming crops, like wheat, 
we could dispense with the necessity of supplying any artificial 
nitrogen fertilizers. 
The present nitrogen deficiency is influenced further by two other 
causes: 
The first cause is our unnecessary exaggerated meat diet, in which 
we try to find our proteid requirements, and which compels us to 
raise so many cattle, while the amount of land which feeds one head 
of cattle could furnish, if properly cultivated, abundant vegetable 
food for a family of five. 
The second cause is our insufficient knowledge of the way to grow 
and prepare for human food just those vegetables which are richest 
in proteids. Unfortunately, it so happens that exactly such plants 
as, for instance, the soy bean are not by any means easily rendered 
palatable and digestible; while any savage can eat raw meat, or can 
readily cook, boil, or roast it for consumption. 
On this subject we can learn much from some Eastern people, like 
the Japanese, who have become experts in the art of preparing a 
variety of agreeable food products from that refractory soy bean, 
which contains such an astonishingly large amount of nutritious 
proteids, and which, long ago, became for Japan a wholesome, staple 
article of diet. 
But on this subject the Western races have not yet progressed 
much beyond the point of preparing cattle feed and paint oil from 
the soy bean, although the more extended culture of this or similar 
plants might work about a revolution ir. our agricultural economics. 
Agriculture, after all, is nothing but a very important branch of 
industrial chemistry, although most people seem to ignore the fact 
that the whole prosperity of agriculture is based on the success of 
that photochemical reaction which, under the influence of the light 
of the sun, causes the carbon dioxide of the air to be assimilated by 
the chlorophyl of the plant. 
It is not impossible that photochemistry, which hitherto has busied 
itself almost exclusively within the narrow limits of the art of making 
photographic images, will some day attain a development of use- 
fulness at least as important as all other branches of physical chem- 
istry. In this broader sense photochemistry seems an inviting 
subject for the agricultural chemist. The possible rewards in store 
73176°—sM 191416 
