THE NITRATE PROBLEM 5 



ducing countries of the world, will be unable to furnish 

 more food than they require for their own con- 

 sumption. It was Sir William Crookes, now Presi- 

 dent of the Royal Society, who as President of the 

 British Association first startled the world by warn- 

 ing it of the menace to its food-supply. The in- 

 creased control gained by man over Nature a 

 geometrically increased control has enabled him 

 to draw on the capital stored in the ground to an 

 extent unthought of by his ancestors, and, like the 

 proverbial nouveau riche, he has been squandering 

 the treasure to which he has gained access. Appetite 

 has come with eating. The treasures that at first 

 seemed inexhaustible are now harder to win than 

 they were, are now showing signs of becoming 

 exhausted, and Nature is threatening to return our 

 spendthrift cheques to us marked with the red ink 

 comment, " No effects." 



Experimental science, when this day arrives, 

 promises to treat us rather as an indulgent guardian 

 than as a hard-hearted money-lender. There is 

 happily in the sun a portion of an estate that we 

 have been able neither to sell nor to mortgage, and 

 when Sir William Crookes startled us into taking 

 stock of our resources, the men of science set to work 

 to see whether it might not be possible to make a 

 better use of our yearly income than under the 

 influence of an apparently unlimited capital we had 

 been doing in the past. Two foodstuffs in bulk are 

 necessary for the life of plants, Carbon and Nitrogen. 

 The first is omnipresent in the air, and under the 

 influence of sunlight the plants from the earliest 



