

MODERN HIGH FARMING. 15 



ble and assimilable form, and many of them lay claim to successes 

 which, although theoretically correct and practically realizable in 

 the laboratory, have never yet been able to stand the test of econom- 

 ical industrial application. 



This great question will eventually be satisfactorily solved, for 

 we have already witnessed the remarkable phenomena of the forma- 

 tion of nitrates by the mere passage of atmospheric air through 

 such porous bodies as pumice stone and chalk, previously impreg- 

 nated with an alkaline solution. It is therefore highly probable that 

 the new compound of nitrogen will be ammoniacal, commercially 

 presented in the form of sulphate, and that the costly product now 

 used and manufactured from the refuse liquors of gas works, will 

 give place to an article of which the price will be comparatively 

 nominal and the supply inexhaustible. 



Until the efforts now being made, however, in all countries, are 

 crowned with success, it behoves us to carefully turn to account all 

 those sources of nitrogen actually at our disposal. That the com- 

 bination of nitrogen and oxygen to form nitric acid actually goes 

 on in the air, we have said enough to prove, and that a similar 

 operation is possible in the soil we can just as easily show. 



In this case the chemical action ensues under the influence of the 

 slow combustion of the carbonized or decaying matters, left behind 

 them by the crops, or by the leaves which have fallen from the trees 

 and been worked into the ground. 



Now, were it possible for us to allow an exhausted field to 

 remain uncultivated for a given number of years, abandoning it to 

 that wild and spontaneous vegetation and subsequent death and 

 decay, which would naturally take place; we should discover that 

 the soil had absorbed such a quantity of nitrogen, as to permit of 

 our reaping large and repeated crops of cereals without any artificial 

 introduction of this essential element. 



But, as this course is diametrically opposed to all the rules 

 of rational culture, and would in the majority of cases be impracti- 

 cable, we cannot for a moment entertain it as a serious remedy, and 

 must seek in other directions that which instead of necessitating the 



