loS THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



ploited at an enormous profit for years to supply, in suitable 

 form, our soil with the very element with which, as a gas, it 

 is so abundantly bathed. To-day a change is impending. 



A few years ago it was discovered by investigators in the 

 ( lerman laboratories that the swellings or tubercles which ap- 

 peared on the rootlets of certain plants were neither diseases 

 nor abnormalities, but were in some way related to the vigor- 

 ous growth of the vegetation. Upon cutting open one of these 

 enlargements or nodules and investigating it by means of the 

 microscope a multitudinous and swarming life was disclosed; 

 the nodules were nothing but nests or balls of bacteria. Fur- 

 ther research showed that these bacteria were friendly to their 

 host, and it was finally made out that their function was to 

 perform the last act in a progressive process by which nitro- 

 gen was extracted from its original sources and finally fed in 

 this predigested form to the vegetation. Plants, it was learned, 

 could no more appropriate nitrogen directly from its combined 

 forms than they could directly appropriate the nitrogen of 

 the air. 



Following the discovery of the nitrogen fixing and feeding 

 bacteria, a widely extended investigation showed their won- 

 derful fertilizing effect upon soils deficient in nitrogen, and 

 as early as 1888 Professor Nobbe had begun a remarkable 

 series of experiments looking to a practical method of inocu- 

 lating the soil with them. His studies led him to believe that 

 if the most unpromising planting-place, as, for instance, pure 

 sand, such as is found at the seashore, were sufficiently fur- 

 nished with these nitrogen gathering bacteria, certain legumi- 

 nous plants peas, beans, peanuts, clover, alfalfa and the like 

 would attract nodules or nests of these feeders, draw their 



