ANALYSIS AND COMPOSITION OF CORN. 



47 



" As to the distribution of each mineral element in the different parts 

 of the plant, it is necessary, in order to study it thoroughly, to enter into 

 a more detailed and separate examination. Phosphoric acid or phos- 

 phorus, plays an important part in agriculture, not because it is more 

 indispensable to vegetation than several other elements, but because na- 

 ture has not distributed it with so much profusion in all lands or in the 

 atmosp'here as certain other elements that on that account are considered 

 secondary. Indeed, there is not any one element in vegetation of any 

 greater importance than another ; and, if any person judges otherwise, it 

 is because he places himself at the point of view of an agriculturist who, 

 having need to produce certain crops of a special kind, needs to accu- 

 mulate such elements as enter specially into their organization. . 



" Therefore, in order to obtain abundant food, in order to produce 

 with rapidity domestic animals whose organs require much phosphorus, ; 

 it is necessary to seek methods for increasing the supply of phosphates, 

 more or less assimilable, that the plants may find in the bed where their 

 roots develop. 



" To indicate the sources of the supply, whether in the residuum of 

 factories, or of the household, or in the numerous repositories, has been 

 one of the greatest services rendered in modern times to agriculture by 

 chemistry and geology. 



" But there our knowledge ends : we are entirely ignorant as to how 

 the phosphorus distributes itself in the vegetable, by what process it 

 penetrates and circulates and accumulates in certain organs, or exactly 

 what these organs are. 



" As to the relative distribution of these elements ; the following tables 

 show as far as concerns maize fodder intended for green preservation 

 by Ensilage. 



PHOSPHORIC ACID. 



Table No. . 



