THE NEW EARTH 



the iron that in a certain form produces the 

 part of the red blood which carries the mo- 

 lecular oxygen to the remotest part of the body 

 and keeps life in poise. So, between the blood 

 in his veins and the green of his fields there 

 comes a close and strange intimacy. 



And how insistent are the plants that they 

 be fed on minerals ! An acre of wheat, it has 

 been shown, will use up ten pounds of lime in 

 coming to maturity; an acre of sugar-beets, 

 thirty-three pounds; ordinary grasses, fifty 

 pounds ; clover, one hundred pounds ; while an 

 acre of tobacco is not satisfied and best adapted 

 for the solace of the pipes of man until it has 

 consumed at least one hundred and thirty 

 pounds. A wheat plant was once kept alive in 

 a chemist's laboratory for several weeks with- 

 out being fed any lime. It had all the other 

 foods, but it slowly sank in the scale. Little 

 by little it used up all the stored-up lime in 

 its body, and then, when the end seemed near 

 and it promised to die of lime starvation, the 

 long- withheld food was administered to it and 

 in a little more than five hours, so great the 

 miracle of plant growth, it began putting 

 forth buds. 



74 



