Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 537 



yielded soluble phosphate of potassa. Tliis explained at once the 

 source of the potassa, and explained too, in part certainly, why 

 acid phosphate of lime is so much more effective and prompt a 

 manure than ground bones. The latter depend mainly on the car- 

 bonic acid of rain water and decaying vegetation for their solution. 

 A similar experiment with steatite showed the prompt action of 

 the acid phosphate of lime on this magnesian mineral. The second 

 quality is that of the action of sulphate of ammonia on the magne- 

 sian minerals in the soil. Mixed with powdered steatite and water, 

 it rapidly disengages the magnesia, at the same time disengaging 

 silica in a form for read}'- solution in the ammonia of rainfalls. 

 The third quality, and one of the most important, is the action of 

 the acid phosphate of lime in the reduction of crude organic matter 

 to the required fineness for use in the growth of plants. 



There has prevailed, for an indefinite period, an idea that vege- 

 table life, evolving albumenoid bodies, must precede animal life; 

 that the nei'ves, muscles, and integuments of animal life, of what- 

 ever grade, must be produced from the albumen elaborated in the 

 plants. But Pasteur has shown that the lower orders of micro- 

 scopic animal life develop their germs in water, containing only 

 non-nitrogenous organic matter (tartrate of potassa), a salt of am- 

 monia, and phosphates of the alkalies and alkaline earths. . The 

 inorganic ammonia furnished the nitrogen, as the inorganic phos- 

 phates supplied the other required mineral constituents of the 

 animal tissues and complete organs. Animals then possess the 

 power of elaborating albumenoid bodies containing nitrogen and 

 the phosphates out of preexisting materials in which the ingredients 

 are found in separate states. This discovery prepared the way for 

 the observation of Collas, that recently prepared (gelatinous) phos- 

 phate of lime added to animal matters greatly promotes their 

 decay. The germs of microscopic life find the food for their 

 gi'owth in condition to be readily assimilated. They multiply and 

 feast upon crude animal matter, which, passing through their 

 organism, is resolved into the finest material food for plants. I 

 have found that acid phosphate of lime possesses this quality of 

 rapidly developing microscopic life in flesh in a most astonishing 

 degree. I have also had the opportunity, during the past summer, 

 to make an experiment, on a generous scale, with vegetable matter, 

 to test the effects of this fertilizer on matter in compost. I mixed 

 with half a ton or more of green grass a quantity of a superior 

 quality of superphosphate, made by George F. Wilson, of the 



