146 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



station workers to reel off investigations, which farmers 

 stand ready to measure with the yardstick rather than by 

 weight, much of our so-callod agricultural investigation 

 will continue to be sneered at by the scientists of Europe, 

 because of a vain attempt to satisfy an immediate popular 

 demand by the appearance of doing something quickly, with 

 the unavoidable result that the deeper problems that must 

 be solved to insure the permanent progress and elevation of 

 agriculture remain practically untouched. 



Nitrogen. 

 Of all the sources of nitrogen that are employed in agri- 

 culture, the nitrates, such as nitrale of soda and nitrate of 

 jiotasJi, are considered as the most readily assimilable, and 

 with but few exceptions the most efficient. Nitrogen in this 

 form can be immediately appropriated by plants. Next in 

 order stands ammoniacal nitrogen, familiar to all as sulfate 

 of ammonia. While there is considerable evidence at hand 

 to show that plants may appropriate some nitrogen, as 

 ammonia, without its first being transformed into nitrates, 

 yet practically most of it is thus changed before it enters 

 the plant. This transformation involves two stages. The 

 first is that known as the nitrous fermentation, by which, 

 through the activity of certain micro-organisms, the ammo- 

 nia is changed into nitrous acid. The second, it has been 

 claimed, may l)e the result of purely chemical processes, 

 but is pro]:>a])ly usually brought about by another kind of 

 micro-organisms known generally as the nitric ferment. 

 Though these changes are induced by the aid of organisms 

 so small that they are only visible by the aid of the most 

 powerful microscopes, yet they are so numerous that they 

 can, under the most favorable circumstances, readily change 

 ammojiia into nitric acid much more rapidly than plants can 

 take it up. During the })rogres8 of these changes some 

 nitrogen is said to be lost and probably a small portion is 

 transformed into organic matter, forming a constituent part 

 of the organisms by whose activity the transformations are 

 efiected. These, in turn, prol)ably change into what is 

 classed as humus, in which condition the nitrogen is only 

 slowly changed back again into a readily assimilable state. 



