A TRIBUTE TO SQUANTO 851 



are not unique, and there is every reason for believing 

 that others equally extensive will be discovered. The 

 decomposing granites and other potash-bearing rocks 

 are affording over wide areas additional stores of this 

 food, so eagerly eaten by plants, and so necessary to 

 the formation of carbohydrates, one of the principal 

 foods of animals. 



The stores of nitrate of soda on the Pacific coast of 

 South America show no signs of exhaustion. In the 

 arid basins of southern California and Arizona are 

 found large deposits of soils containing from 5 to 20 

 per cent, of nitrates. These deposits have been formed 

 in past ages of the earth from the decay of marine veg- 

 etation and animal remains. Deposits of guano are 

 formed chiefly from the debris of birds, mostly of ma- 

 rine predatory habits. In the little frequented islands 

 of the Hawaiian group these deposits are now forming, 

 as is shown in photographs I have lately seen, in which 

 large areas are completely covered with birds and their 

 eggs. 



NOTHING IS HOPELESSLY LOST. 



The bones of marine and terrestrial animals, man in- 

 cluded, are never wholly lost to agriculture. In this 

 country alone are found deposits of phosphates in South 

 Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, large 

 enough to feed our crops for many millenniums. Thus 

 the three most essential plant foods, namely, phosphoric 

 acid, potash and nitrogen, are stored on every hand in 

 forms not obnoxious to decay, and in places accessible 

 to man. 



There is no death, only atomic changing, 

 When life from one form to another passes, 

 And new life comes but from the rearranging 

 Of the old parts in new atomic masses. 



