196 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



softly washing away the dirt, you will find them strung 

 all along with beautiful and almost translucent round 

 bodies : these are the home of the bacteria. 



It was found a little later that if these bacteria 

 nodules were lacking, the legumes would fail Some 

 soil, however, was found always supplied. Then it 

 occurred to someone to inoculate the soil; that is, 

 carry bacteria-supplied soil to localities lacking them, 

 to see if it would work a change. It was discovered 

 that every sort of legume had its own special bacteria 

 and it would grow only when supplied with its own 

 friends, but as a rule we could transplant the bacteria 

 needed. 



So we got alfalfa where it had refused to grow by 

 giving it alfalfa bacteria. Some of these life germs 

 are not very much unlike, however, for that which 

 accompanies sweet clover will do for alfalfa. Beans 

 and peas will grow for a while without any bacteria, 

 but in that case they will exhaust the soil, while with 

 bacteria they enrich it. 



One experiment station reports that of two plats of 

 soil, one inoculated and the other not, the first 

 yielded over nine thousand pounds of green forage 

 per acre, the other nine hundred; in hay, the first 

 yielded twenty-five hundred pounds, and the other 

 two hundred and thirty. So goes the most wonder- 

 ful chapter on soil making and soil renewing. Rota- 

 tion of crops is, of course, not superseded by this 

 discovery, for it is still true that corn lands, after a 

 few years, must be turned over to peas and clover, 



