THE SOIL AS AN ASSET 228 



nitrates for war are many times greater than 

 those for peace; and chemists seeking a new 

 source of nitrogen for explosives hit on the 

 electric arc as the means. This invention has 

 already come into use agriculturally in Nor- 

 way, where only 1.3 per cent, of the land is 

 susceptible to farming, and therefore cannot 

 be spared as a nitrogen factory itself. The 

 government is utilizing many thousands of 

 electrical horse power, generated by mountain 

 streams, for this purpose. Here is a form of 

 "commercial fertilizer," then, that is not futile. 

 Yet we have just seen that the average farmer 

 can attain the same result in his fields auto- 

 matically by proper rotations, or adding de- 

 caying organic compounds which contain no 

 nitrogen in themselves,, but are merely the food 

 of microscropic creatures that manufacture 

 nitrates. 



It will be readily comprehended, then, that 

 the element nitrogen, upon which Liebig laid 

 especial stress, and which Sir William Crookes 

 thought to be the most elusive and scarce of 

 all, is always present in sufficient quantities in 

 all farm soils, providing only that the farm- 

 ing is carried on according to accepted tradi- 

 tions. Science has nothing to do with it. 



