72 THE FIRST BOOK OF FARMING 



Experiment. Soak some beans, peas or corn, 

 twenty-four hours ; carefully dry them with a cloth. 

 In one half-pint bottle place enough of them to 

 cover the bottom of the bottle two or three seeds 

 deep; mark this bottle A. Fill another bottle two- 

 thirds full of them and mark the bottle B (Fig. 37). 

 Cork the bottles and let them stand for several 

 days. Also let some seeds remain soaking in the 

 water. The few seeds in bottle A will sprout, while 

 the larger number in bottle B will not sprout, or 

 will produce only very short sprouts. Why do not 

 the seeds sprout easily in the bottle which is more 

 than half full? 



To answer this question try the following experi- 

 ment: 



Experiment. Carefully loosen the cork in bottle 

 B (the bottle containing poorly sprouted seeds), 

 light a match, remove the cork from the bottle and 

 introduce the lighted match. The match will stop 

 burning as soon as it is held in the bottle, because 

 there is no fresh air in the bottle to keep the match 

 burning. Test bottle A in the same way. What 

 has become of the fresh air that was in the bottles 

 when the seeds were put in them ? The seeds have 

 taken something from it and have left bad air in its 

 place; they need fresh air to help them sprout, but 

 they have not sprouted so well in bottle B because 

 there was not fresh air enough for so many seeds. 

 The seeds in the water do not sprout because there 

 is not enough air in the water. Now try another 

 experiment. 



