CHAPTER III 



SOIL INOCULATION 



^T^HE word bacteria has come to have 

 -*- a most suspicious appearance. Bacteria 

 have so long been identified with disease and 

 death that it seems difficult to look upon them 

 as of help to the race. And yet they are of 

 enormous importance to every man who raises 

 a flower or a grain of wheat or a tree of rich 

 fruit. 



While it has been known for at least two 

 centuries that these bacteria exist, it has only 

 been since the opening of the era of the New 

 Earth that they have been studied with any 

 degree of satisfaction. They exist everywhere, 

 in earth and air and sea. They were believed 

 at one time to have animal life, but they are 

 now almost universally accepted as low forms of 

 vegetable life. Over a thousand different kinds 

 are now known, and the list is being steadily 

 added to as knowledge of them increases. 

 Some have the singular power of cutting 



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