360 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



inspiring thing about it all is that no farmer is more anxious to 

 find the plants that he can most profitably grow than the 

 chemists and certain other scientists are to find them for him. 

 It is a remarkable condition of things. In no other time and 

 in no other country have the interests of the farmer been so 

 vigorously looked after by men of scientific attainments, and 

 of all these the chemists are in the front rank. 



Nothing can be more important in agriculture than the fer- 

 tility of the soil. It is the chemists who analyze the fertilizers 

 placed upon the market and see to it that the buyer gets the 

 ingredients he bargains for. It is the chemists who have de- 

 termined the elements which certain plants take from the soil 

 in which they grow and the best methods to prevent the wear- 

 ing out of the land. It was the chemists who first pointed 

 out the value of phosphatic slag as a fertilizing material. In 

 the manufacture of iron, the presence of phosphorus has 

 always been a great drawback, a very small quantity rendering 

 the iron unfit for most purposes. 



A few years ago a process was invented by means of which 

 nearly all the phosphorus was removed from the pig iron by 

 means of a simple chemical process. In this operation the 

 phosphorus is made to combine with lime, and immense quan- 

 tities of slag heavily charged with phosphorus are thus pro- 

 duced. For many years this slag was considered refuse and 

 of no value. When the chemists got at it, however, it was 

 found that this worthless by-product of the manufacture of 

 iron contained a higher percentage of phosphorus available 

 as plant food than the natural phosphates. 



A resource of even greater importance than these phos- 

 phatic slags is the nitrogen which chemistry has recently 

 rendered available to our farmers as a fertilizing material. 



