Inoculating the Ground 



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Photo from Alexander Graham Bell. Copyright, 1904, by the National Geographic Magazine 



This Group of Monkevs Represent a Favorite Maxim of the Japanese, "Hear 

 No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" 



It is a wood carving on a door of the stable of one of the sacred horses at Nikko 



INOCULATING THE GROUND 



TO. inoculate sterile ground and 

 make it bring forth fruit in 

 abundance is one of the latest 

 achievements of American science. Some 

 of man's most dread diseases — smallpox, 

 diphtheria, plague, rabies — have been 

 vanquished by inoculation, and now 

 inoculation is to cure soil that has been 

 worn out and make it fertile and pro- 

 ductive again. 



The germs that bring fertility are 

 mailed by the Department of Agricult- 

 ure in a small package like a yeast 

 cake. The cake contains millions of 

 dried germs. The farmer who receives 

 the cake drops it into a barrel of clean 

 water ; the germs are revived and soon 

 turn the water to a milky white. Seeds 

 of clover, peas, alfalfa, or other legu- 



minous plants that are then soaked in 

 this milky preparation are endowed 

 with marvelous strength. Land on 

 which, for instance, the farmer with 

 constant toil had obtained alfalfa only 

 a few inches high, when planted with 

 these inoculated seeds will produce al- 

 falfa several feet high and so rich that 

 the farmer does not recognize his crop. 

 It has been long known that repeated 

 crops of wheat and grain gradually ex- 

 haust the nitrogen in the soil. Now, 

 as all plants must have nitrogen, which 

 in normal condition they absorb through 

 their roots, this constant drain of nitro- 

 gen from the soil has so alarmed some 

 persons that they have predicted a "ni- 

 trogen famine" to occur in 40 or 50 

 years, and they have very graphically 



