CLOVER CUI/TURS. 9 



commerce or that which enters into grain, grasses or the ani- 

 mal forms is drawn are either the sedimentary rocks, the 

 remains of animal or plant life, the soil in which plant life 

 flourishes, or, finally the atmosphere itself. The sedimentary 

 rocks abound in animal and vegetable remains, and the 

 atmosphere before rains, and especially after protracted 

 drouths, contains available nitrogen in the form of ammonia 

 which the rains bring down. It is evident that this latter 

 form is a mere exhalation from decaying plant or animal life 

 on earth, a supposition rendered still more evident by the 

 fact that the amount of ammonia brought down by the rains is 

 greater near large cities where decey is greater than it is in agri- 

 cultural districts. Two methods alone have been suggested with 

 any show of proof, by which the nitrogen of the atmosphere 

 may be transformed into the nitrogenous compounds that 

 make up the fertility of the soil the one the combination 

 called nitric acid, and believed to be a result of power- 

 ful electrical action in the air during thunderstorms, and the 

 other the action of the legumes through the microbes in the 

 tubercles on their roots. The last has been demonstrated to 

 be a fact, but the exact way in which it is done seems to be 

 as mysterious as ever. May it not be (and we put the ques- 

 tion merely as a suggestion, never having heard it advanced 

 by any scientific authority) that the supply of nitrogen for 

 the support, of the -life of the plant or animal is main- 

 ly, if not wholly, obtained from the legumes which alone 

 of all plant life have been clearly demonstrated to have the 

 power to procure it, in a way not yet explained, from the free 

 nitrogen of the atmosphere? 



Speaking, more particularly of the place of nitro- 

 gen in the animal economy, it, or rather the albumi- 

 noids, (the form in which the nitrogen is appropri- 

 ated by the animal), forms the lean meat of 

 all animals, much of the blood, the white and yolk of 

 the egg:, and is in fact the flesh-former and strength-giver of 

 the animal economy. Potash, lime and the phospates enter 

 into the bony structure, and to some extent into the flesh. 

 Carbon is the main element of the fat, but without the albu- 

 minoids there can be no muscular formation, and hence no 

 .animal life. It is perfectly clear that the animal can receive 

 nothing into its organization except through the food it con- 

 sumes, and hence the flesh-forming element must be in the 

 plant, the grass, the grain, or new milk fed to the young, 

 and in the proportion adapted to the age of the animal about 



