Feeding the Land 199 



that no other world, even if it has Hfe, can have this 

 our Hfe of flower and shrub, of orchard and vine, 

 of bird and beast and man. We are alone in the 

 vasty deep of space, coming whence, going whither, 

 living our span, thinking, doing, fitted for no other 

 habitation in the commensurable world than this 

 our home. And here the chemistry of the soil is the 

 physical basis of life. We are not the chemist ; ours 

 is not the laboratory. We may toss pigmy portions 

 of the elements about, scratch the surface of the 

 earth with a pin, drop seed in a hole, or plant a root 

 in a crack. The chemical processes go on despite 

 our petty activity or our valorous ignorance. If we 

 plant the seed or set the root with Nature, she 

 cares for it, feeding it bountifully; if we are indiffer- 

 ent to her, she treats us and seed and root as mere 

 elements to be agents or re-agents in her crucible 

 and to become available food for the perpetuation 

 of life on the globe, each after its kind. 



Helpless, bold, carrying our lives in our hands we 

 must turn to the ground for our existence. It is the 

 laboratory in which every work of man is latent. 

 We discover that for our purposes and ends the 

 soil should be as it were charged with plant-food. 

 It is a case of intensive chemistry. For purposes 

 of perpetuating plant life, each after its kind, the 

 intensiveness is not required ; but for our purposes, 

 to secure food in the form we desire, the soil must 

 contain three elements in larger quantity than that 

 in which they are usually found in the wild: pot- 

 ash, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen. New land, 



