THE NEW EARTH 



supplies from the air. At every point they act ^ 

 as agents in advancing the interests of man. 



Four-fifths of the air we breathe is plant- 

 food, nitrogen, one of the most valuable items 

 in the larder of the crops. Some of this nitro- 

 gen is available in one form, some in another, 

 but it must all be put into such form that it 

 may pass into the system of the plant and be 

 utilized in the building up of stalk and leaf 

 and ripened seed. Upon every acre of ground 

 there are resting about seventy-five millions of 

 pounds of atmospheric nitrogen, which gives 

 some idea of the vast store of food provided 

 free of all cost. 



Now, it is not at all unlikely that the farmer 

 of the Old Earth looks with distrust upon such 

 a thing as the inoculation of the soil, quite as 

 he has looked upon many other new things 

 which, to him, were but theoretical fads, of no 

 practical value. To spend the money of the 

 state in bringing native bacteria from the soil 

 of one commonwealth to be put in the deple- 

 ted soil of another, in order to restore the 

 exhausted soil, — it would be to him as great a 

 waste of money as that spent on the education 

 of farmers' sons and daughters. 



30 



