THE NEW FERTILIZATION. in 



nitrogen supply through their bodies and produce vegetable 

 growth with the luxuriance of any other fertile soil. 



By successive steps Nobbe isolated the germs, obtained 

 them in colonies of pure culture and bred them by the billion. 

 His experiments with them in sheer sand were crowned with 

 the utmost success, and it was not long before an enterprising 

 but eminently respectable German firm was putting the germs 

 up in packages and selling them broadcast over the Empire. 

 The attempted commercial exploitation of the bacteria was, 

 however, a disappointment in every way. A few purchasers 

 reported good results, but in the great majority of cases they 

 failed to fulfil expectations, and after a few months the prep- 

 arations were withdrawn from the market. 



It was at this stage that Dr. Moore took up the work in 

 this country. He discovered that, while the organisms had a 

 pronounced preference for nitrogen in the form of salts nitro- 

 gen in combination, as in well-known fertilizers they were 

 perfectly capable of drawing their entire supply from the pure 

 gaseous oceans of it in the air. Give them nitrogenous mat- 

 ter to feed upon and they would not touch atmospheric nitro- 

 gen. He learned that every investigator who had sought to 

 cultivate nitro-organisms had supplied them with food in the 

 form of nitrogenous material nitrogen in combination, and 

 that this form of feeding had the same effect upon these tiny 

 creatures that young men suffer when they have every want 

 and wish supplied without an effort on their part they failed 

 to develop their powers, and upon exposure, as in commercial 

 exploitation, they soon deteriorated and died. Dr. Moore 

 sought to develop a more hardy breed. He gradually de- 

 prived them of all nitrogenous combinations and compelled 

 them to seek their sustenance wholly from the atmosphere. 



