310 



THE IEKIGATION AGE. 



HOW DEAD AND INANIMATE NATURE 

 GROWS. 



By Dr. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, A. B., M. A., 

 M. D. (Johns Hopkins). 



Although the tradition of spontaneous genera- 

 tion to the birth of living things from nothing was 

 finally and forever disproved by pasteur only to be 

 revived last year by Dr. H. Charlaton Bastian of 

 England and again definitely disproved by practi- 

 cally all living biologists, no one has yet arisen in 

 the scientific world who dares deny that inanimate, 

 inorganic mineral bodies in certain forms grow and 

 multiply. 



Even school children are all familiar with the 

 growth of larger plant and animal life. Advanced 

 students see the recondite phenomena of cellular 

 growth and microbic multiplication may be watched 

 by the trained biologist. But even the observant 

 misses the assembling of powers that go to form 

 the tissue, the cell, or the protoplasm, and in this 

 respect he is more limited in his vision than the 

 physicist, chemist, or mineralogist who with his 

 experienced eye glued to the microscope may be 

 witness to the very birth, not to speak of growth 

 of an inanimate, inorganic crystal. He may thus 

 with Pistil maintain that the biologist sees no very 

 different force in animate growth than he himself 

 sees in the analogous productive and growing forces 

 by which crystals wax large, bud out, and expand. 



Anyone may see the beautiful growth of crys- 

 tals. It is no privily arranged phenomenon, open 

 only to an inner circle, a privy council, a secret 

 elect. Go to your family doctor and ask him to 

 show you the actual process of crystal growth. He 

 will more than likely prepare a solution of "lunar 

 caustic" which is silver nitrate in chemical nomen- 

 clature. Properly prepared it is silver dissolved in 

 nitric acid and is as clear as water. In this form 

 the silver cannot be seen with the naked eye, nor 

 even detected in this combined form of nitrate of 

 silver, with the most powerful miscroscope. Now 

 if a few drops of this are placed in a watch crystal 

 beneath the microscope and a piece or two of shin- 

 ing copper be added to this and the eye quickly 

 placed over the miscroscope in a position to watch 

 everything that occurs, lo ! and behold, the pure 

 silver will be seen to free itself in the liquid and a 

 magnificent fern tree will grow right beneath your 

 eyes. In the same way many other elemental trees 

 of gold, lead, bismuth, and mercury may be grown 

 in a few seconds. 



Sunlight, electric light, gas light and all varie- 

 ties of light are unsuitable for miscroscopic obser- 

 vations of a certain kind. Hence it is helpful to the 

 microscopist to employ as aids a series of glass 

 prisms which go by a special name the miscropo- 

 lariscope. As the light passes through these prisms, 

 the light is bent or bowed, and is said to be polar- 

 ized. 



One of the uses of this instrument is to aid 

 the eye in watching colorless crystals grow. Sugar, 

 strychnine, salt, and many other substances soluble 

 in alchohol and ether, which form crystals, may be 

 seen to arise, grow and give birth to daughter crystals 

 (Continued on page 324.) 



YELLOWSTONE IRRIGATION DISTRICT, 

 MONTANA 



The attention of our readers is called to an il- 

 lustration in this issue of a flume near Forsyth, 

 Montana, which was erected for the Yellowstone 

 Irrigation District. The canal of this system is 

 twenty-nine miles long, starting six miles west of 

 Forsyth and running to the town of Hysham. The 

 Klauer Manufacturing Co., Dubuque, la., took the 

 contract for building the ditch, pipe line and flume 

 complete and accepted irrigation bonds in payment. 

 This ditch will irrigate about 13,600 acres and the 

 cost per acre will not exceed $20. 



The Yellowstone river is the source of supply, 

 and being a gravity ditch the cost of maintenance 

 will be light. The land under this system is con- 

 sidered equal in point of productiveness to any in 

 Montana. 



There are between six and seven hundred peo- 

 ple living on this tract and over two-thirds of the 

 ground is already under cultivation. The main 

 work will be completed in about 30 days. 



ALFALFA FOR POULTRY 



(Philo K. Blinn, Colorado Experiment Station, Rocky Ford, 

 Colorado.) 



Alfalfa is one of the best plants to furnish green 

 food for chickens, but ordinarily it soon kills out if 

 over-pastured. 



Alfalfa crowns that have been cut off and 

 plowed under and that have taken root again, are 

 much harder to kill out, as many have found by re- 

 peatedly grubbing out the same stool that has 

 taken root the second time. Such crowns seem to 

 put, out shoots from each piece of root that is left 

 in the ground, if the soil is in favorable condition. 



. Those who desire to establish alfalfa in their 

 poultry yards can succeed in this way by plowing 

 or spading under alfalfa crowns that have been 

 freshly plowed out from some field near by. Early 

 in the spring is the best time, while the crowns are 

 still dormant. The crowns should be covered four 

 to six inches deep, and the soil wet down and kept 

 moist and the chickens kept off until the crowns 

 have become established, which will be much 

 sooner than by alfalfa seeding, and -will stand imuch 

 harder pasture. 



CLEANING OLD PAINT BRUSHES 



(Jerome B. Frisbie, Colorado Agricultural College, Fort 

 Collins, Colo.) 



Dissolve one part of crystallized sodium car- 

 bonate in three parts of water and put the solution 

 in a jar about six inches deep, then suspend the 

 paint brush in the solution with the bottom of the 

 brush about two inches from the bottom of the solu- 

 tion. Keep the jar in a good warm place, with tem- 

 perature of about 150 degrees for twelve hours or 

 more. The dried paint will then become so soft 

 that it can be easily washed out with soap and 

 water. 



