8 COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE AND DAIRYING 
have an examination made of that soil you will find less than one-twentieth as 
many soil bacteria in it as if that land had been ploughed up and cultivated for a 
couple of years. The reason is that the sod land does not afford favourable conditions 
for their multiplication; by actual examination, sod land like that contains less than 
one-twentieth as large a number of bacteria per cubic inch as is contained in the land 
after being cultivated the second year. Everybody knows that if you plough up the 
sod in an orchard the trees take on greater vital activity, they produce better crops 
and they make a better growth of wood, because nature’s cooks are preparing, out of 
the materials found in the soil, food for their use. The value of those lowly forms of 
life in all the fields of this country is what I am trying to impress upon the Com- 
mittee. 
Again, they do not thrive very fast in wood land. If you have land that is what 
is called slightly sour, they do not thrive in land like that. But a very light dressing 
of quick lime will change that land, it will neutralize the acid in the soil to the extent 
of making the soil fit for these things to live in and to multiply; and they will mul- 
tiply, multiply and make the land fertile, not by increasing the quantity of the sub- 
stances of plant food, but by altering the conditions so as to make the food soluble, 
and ready for use. 
' It has been the practice in the old countries to put a compost dressing on the 
fields. Thirty years ago I remember helping to make them as a lad on my Saturdays 
out of school. How are they made? So many cart loads of dust or scrapings from a 
well travelled road, so many cart loads of sods, and so many bushels of lime all mixed 
up. The constituents are well mixed, left at rest for a time and mixed over again 
once a week, and then the compost is scattered thinly on the land. 
Some years ago I had sent to me from England a formula for the making of 
compost that was said to be over 250 years old, and to come from Somersetshire, famous 
for its dairy products. The formula was to take so many cart loads of dust from the 
highroad, so many loads of turf, and so many bushels of lime, make them into a 
heap and turn them over twice or more. When such a compost was put on the land 
i4, was said that it made a tremendous difference in the crop. I showed the formula to 
aa eminent chemist, who after examining it said it was worth nothing, that it was 
like the old superstition as to the virtue of killing pigs in certain phases of the moon. 
And yet there was the experience of 250 years, as shown by the traditions and records; 
buat be said the formula did not add anything to the land but lime, and that did not 
count for much because the land might have it already. On the other hand, take a 
man who has studied the lower forms of life and wants to make a culture of soil 
bacteria; what does he do? He may take sod and dust—and there is nothing better 
thaw road dust—and put in some lime. He will make a culture—what the dairyman 
would call a ‘starter.’ This old Somersetshire compost was a culture, a starter, pro- 
moting the growth of low forms of life that would work like Trojans in preparing 
soil food for plants. 
Moreover, there are other forms of bacteria which increase the productiveness of 
land in quite another way—which add to the nitrogen content of plants and soil by 
fixing nitrogen direct from the atmosphere. 
I have seen men with a wagon take three bags of earth from one piece of ground 
to sow on another piece of ground that would not grow clover; and the following year 
the clover grew luxuriantly. In taking this earth from the one piece of land to the 
cihcr the men were seeding the land to which the earth was taken with bacteria. Some- 
tines if clover will not thrive the first year it will do better the second year; the reason 
fur its not doing so well the first year being that the low forms of life were not abund- 
ant enough, or perhaps that the particular germ which lives in clover roots was not 
present in the soil. If you pull up clover and examine the roots you will find little 
nodules or tubercles containing low forms of life. These low forms of life are an 
acency by which the land is made rich by taking in free nitrogen from the atmosphere. 
An eminent French chemist is reported to have made cultures of soil bacteria which 
have enriched the land in nitrogen content, apart from the growing of clover. What 
is the possibility of this thing? ons 
