SOIL INOCULATION 



But the newer farmer and gardener and the 

 man of moderate means, who dearly loves to 

 have his garden or a bit of wild land some- 

 where which he can subdue and bring under 

 cultivation, together with that constantly 

 increasing number of city folk who have 

 abundance of means and who are ennobling 

 America by their splendidly managed estates, 

 these are dwellers upon the New Earth; to 

 them such a discovery as that of the inocula- 

 tion of soils must come with a wider sweep of 

 interest than the finding of a star. 



I saw in a chemist's laboratory one day 

 a series of pots containing growing plants. 

 There was a section of the state in which the 

 land was worn out by injudicious cropping. In 

 one of the pots was some of the depleted soil 

 from this region, in which a few spears of clo- 

 ver were pitifully struggling to grow into what 

 would be, at best, but a lean and starved matu- 

 rity. The plant was stunted, yellow, thriftless, 

 type of the plants which you may see in any 

 soil which has been cropped until worn out, 

 until it has, in large measure, lost its reproduc- 

 tive powers. The plant was creeping slowly 

 along toward a seedless end. 



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