SHERMAN] NATURE— THE SUPREME PROVIDER 197 



to have been any objection to mixed flour in those days, so Nature 

 added a number of things to rock-flour, the most important of 

 these being ten mineral elements that are essential in food for 

 animals as well as in that for man. 



Three of these necessary elements we all should know more 

 about, for the particular reason that it is becoming quite a problem 

 to keep the soil supphed with them in sufficient quantities. One 

 of these elements is nitrogen. If no nitrogen is within easy reach 

 of the roots of plants, they just naturally die — no matter how 

 miuch they may have of the other nine elements. And while we 

 are considering nitrogen it is well to bear in mind that if plant-life 

 should fail to get an adequate supply of it man could not get food, 

 and he, as well as animals, would suddenly disappear from the earth. 

 Had some food administration taken charge of feeding the plant- 

 life of the earth, as such authorities are now regulating the food- 

 supply of man, conditions would have been very different. How- 

 ever, Nature, herself was a capable administrator, and she seems 

 in one way or another to have furnished an inexhaustible supply of 

 all that man needs, notwithstanding the efforts of the race to 

 squander and destroy her bounties. 



Nature had provided plenty of nitrogen. She put a goodly 

 supply in the soil everywhere to begin with, and then she stored an 

 enormous amount in Chile and other parts of the earth. Perhaps 

 she had an inkling of what human nature would be inclined to do 

 in the handling of natural resources, and so put a comparatively 

 small portion in the earth and an imlimited supply in the air, where 

 it was more difficult for man to get at. Evidently Nature knew 

 that man would need all the help she could give him in making a 

 living, and as the nitrogen of the air — which is about three-fourths . 

 of what we breathe — is of no use as a food for plants until it is com- 

 bined with other chemical elements, she gave the plants themselves 

 in the first place the means of obtaining nitrogen. Later man 

 would learn about the ways of nitrogen for himself. In the very 

 beginning of things, before man had encumbered the earth to any 

 great extent, plant-organism was a ver\' simple affair; there was 

 but one ceU to be reckoned with, and plants were comparatively 

 independent in their use of nitrogen. For it was the habit of this 

 one cell to take in all the nitrogen it needed. But after a time the 

 plants became ambitious — not unlike himian beings. They grew 

 out of the simple life into that of a complex organism, and then the 

 food problem became more difficult. But when man was ready to 



