46 THE STATE AS FARMER 



two important laws of life prevail here too. 

 The good may be encouraged and developed 

 by the mere destruction of the evil species; 

 and the evil may be kept down by the 

 nourishing condition of the good. These are 

 two distinct efforts in agricultural physiology 

 just as they are in real life. But as water 

 is a necessity in all primary considerations 

 of life, so all our activities in agriculture 

 are conditioned by, or are dependent upon, 

 some aspect of bacteriological influence which 

 injures, warns, or blesses us by its marvellous 

 power. We have first the fermentative action 

 in the soil itself, and that primal self-opinion- 

 ative action which takes from the air and 

 from the hard, cruel surface of the freshly 

 broken rocks that nutriment which enables 

 the first forms of vegetable life to assert 

 themselves and become visible personalities 

 before the eyes of man. The next curious 

 power possessed by these organisms is to 

 act as intermediaries between the purely 

 chemical and the organic. Their usefulness 

 is very great in adapting manures to the 

 vegetable world, and in redressing the loss 

 of nitrogen by bringing it back by a very 



