SOME STATION INVESTIGATIONS IN FERTILIZERS 293 



effectual in preventing the loss of nitrogen, it fails to add the potash and phos- 

 phoric acid needed, and the above mixture will be as effective in preventing 

 loss of nitrogen, and will at the same time add what the manure is deficient 

 in. The Ehode Island Station has done perhaps more in the investigation of 

 the value and effects of lime than any other of our Stations, and we add here, 

 as an addition to what we have already said upon the effects of lime, the fol- 

 lowing quotation from Bulletin 40 of that Station : 



CHEMICAL ACTION OF LIME. 



"Lime unites with acid substances in the soil, by which the soil is sweet- 

 ened, or its natural acidity (sourness) overcome or reduced. In case certain 

 injurious iron compounds are present in soils, these are so transformed by 

 lime as to be rendered harmless. It also acts upon the potash compounds 

 in the soil in such a way that the lime takes the place of the potash, setting 

 the latter free for the use of plants. If lime is present in a soil to which 

 ordinaVy commercial fertilizers, dissolved bonehlack, dissolved bone, dissolved 

 phosphate rock, or double superphosphate, have been added, it is probable 

 that some of the soluble phosphoric acid will further combine with lime, in 

 which condition it would he expected to be more readily available to plants 

 than would have been the case had lime been absent, and a-more favorable op- 

 portunity been given for all the phosphoric acid not quickly utilized by the 

 plants to combine with iron and aluminum oxids. 



BIO-CHEMICAL EFFECTS OF LIME. 



"The presence of lime in soils favors the decomposition of the organic 

 matter which they contain, and in this process carbonic acid is produced, 

 which in turn acts upon the ingredients of the soils in such a way as to render 

 the natural plant food much more readily assimilable. It plays, likewise, an 

 important part in facilitating the change of ammonia into nitric acid, or, 

 in other words, in placing at the disposal of plants the stored up nitrogen of 

 the soil, as well as that applied to or left in it, in the form of animal ma- 

 nures, meat, blood, fish, plant roots, etc. 



"Clover, alfalfa, and certain other of the plants which have the power 

 of drawing their nitrogen supply chiefly from the air within the soil, are 

 unable to make a satisfactory growth and to thus utilize the vast amount of 

 nitrogen about them, provided the soil exceeds a certain degree of acidity, but 

 by the application of lime they are made to thrive and to gather for the 

 farmer stores of nitrogen, for which he must pay a fertilizer dealer, at present 

 prices, at the rate of about thirteen cents per pound." 



