126 Practical Farming 



in the chaff, will inoculate the soil for clover of any other 



species. In fact, the use of inoculated soil is now the 



general mode of introducing the bacteria to new localities. 



The Southern cow pea needs no inoculation in the South, 



where it has been grown for generations, and in a new 



locality the dust that always goes with the peas, will carry 



the inoculation. 



Soil in which there is an abundant supply 



Conditions of organic matter will always contain an 



Affecting abundance of the nitrifying organisms, pro- 



Bacterial Life , , . . „ , . i i , 



in the Soil vided it is well drained and has not gotton 



into an acid condition. Acidity in the soil 

 is destructive to the nitrifying organisms as well as to the 

 symbiotic ones that live on the roots of legumes; and the 

 failure of clover in many parts of the country is due more 

 to acidity in the soil than to any other cause. The appli- 

 cation of phosphoric acid, in the form of dissolved phos- 

 phatic rock has been thought to be largely the cause of 

 this acidity. Not from the acid used in the making of 

 the acid phosphate direct, for it is rather a humic acidity; 

 but because, when the phosphate is apphed to the soil, the 

 phosphorus is used by plants and the sulphuric acid used 

 in dissolving the rock is set free and at once unites with the 

 lime in the soil, making sulphate of lime, and thus rob- 

 bing the soil of lime carbonate necessary to preserve its 

 alkalinity. The cure for such a condition is of course 

 lime carbonate. Lime not only sweetens an acid soil 

 and renders it suitable for the bacterial life, but it directly 

 promotes the growth of the bacteria. These minute 

 plants have no green matter, and hence cannot get carbon 

 from the air as green plants do; but it has been found 



