136 The Ottawa Naturalist. 



health and strength to meet winter's hardships to be heard in 

 few other bird voices. 



The various Httle finches, and most of the smaller birds 

 who pass the winter with us, are more or less plaintive-voiced, 

 and even the notes of the ever busy and lively little chickadee, 

 coming through the deserted woods on a late autumn day, never 

 fail to remind one of the gloomy season. 



SOIL INOCULATION BY NITRAGIN. 



By F. T. Shuit, Esq., M.A., F.C.S. 



Discoveries of the greatest importance to the farming world 

 have of late years resulted from the application of chemistry and 

 bacteriology to the solution of agricultural problems. Notable 

 among these has been the demonstration by the celebrated 

 German scientist, Hellriegel, that the free nitrogen of the 

 atmosphere may be utilized by members of the leguminosse 

 (clover, peas, beans, etc.) through the agency of certain micro- 

 organisms present in the soil. As far as we are aware, only 

 plants of this botanical order can make this use of atmospheric 

 nitrogen, and their ability to do so depends on the presence of 

 these minute organisms that live in nodules upon their rootlets. 

 The establishment of this fact is not merely of scientific import- 

 ance ; it has a practical and commercial aspect of great value. 

 It has shown the way to soil enrichment in one of the essential 

 and indeed the most costly element of plant food. 



Perhaps the most economical method of increasing the per- 

 centage of available soil nitrogen is at present by plowing under 

 a growing crop of one of these plants, for the nitrogen they 

 possess has for the most part been gathered from the air. Day 

 by day they have stored this nitrogen in their roots, stems and 



