126 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
the stations already to furnish them a supply of this material, and we 
are cooperating with some of the stations in getting it into use on the 
poor soils. : 
Mr. Bowrz. We have nine so called agricultural schools in Alabama, 
and then the State school. Do you supply it to these State schools? 
Mr. Woops. We put it in every county in Alabama through the 
cooperation of your experiment station. We furnished your station 
the stuff and they have supplied it to one farmer in every county in 
Alabama. 
Mr. Bowtr. Now we have.rfine district schools in Alabama; you do 
not correspond with them? 
Mr. Woops. No; we can hardly answer the correspondence, we 
can hardly keep it answered, we have so much of it. 
Mr. Gattoway. We have found in the importing of seed from 
foreign countries where we get legumes that if you bring the seed in 
and they are brought in without any earth or anything of that kind 
that in many cases we can not get them to grow at all, for the reason 
that the organisms are not brought in at the same time the seed is 
brought in. Now, our men get some of the organisms and distribute 
organisms with the seed and get the crops started at once. 
Mr. Woops. For instance, we can get alfalfa that will grow in 
Maryland where they have not been able to grow it before. It has 
been the same way in reference to clover on soils they did not think 
they could grow it. It is a relation between these crops and these 
organisms that is the result of thousands of years, and if you break it 
it removes one of the normal conditions of growth, and it is one of 
those things that scientific men have been working on for a long time. 
Mr. Bowrz. Who worked this up? 
Mr. Woops. Jt was worked up by Doctor Moore in our division— 
the man in charge of the physiological laboratory. 
Mr. Scorr. Will this be of any advantage to the blue grass? 
Mr. Woops. It will, in this way. If you grow a crop of clover or 
cowpeas and then remove it, you have left in the soil a lot of nitro- 
gen, and then you can put in there another crop, and this other crop 
can use this nitrogen. 
Mr. Bowts. That is a secondary process? 
Mr. Woops. It is a secondary process. So wherever it is possi- 
ble to grow leguminous crops in rotation with other crops you can 
profitably fix your nitrogen in this way, and it has been known for 
many years that there are organisms which grow in asoil that do not 
form on the roots, but continue the power of fixing nitrogen, and we 
have been studying those for a long time and we have come to the 
conclusion that we can introduce those organisms into agriculture in 
the same way we have here. That is, we can produce a culture of 
bacteria that if it is put in any soil with any crop or even without a 
crop will go right on fixing atmospheric nitrogen. 
Mr. Bowrs. How often do you give that to the soil? 
Mr. Woops. Put it on once and it is there for ten or fifteen years, 
anyway. 
a Bowir. Then is not one of these packages good for fifteen 
years 
Mr. Woops. I presume if you put that on once on any kind of @ 
decent soil you would never have to renew it. 
Mr. Grarr. Is it not true that these bacteria in a soil already. 
charged with nitrogen will not work? 
