iS6 



HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SIP. 



"Excelsior" would hardly do for such a situation. 

 Last year's efforts failed, but a second attempt is 

 being made under the direction of the veteran French 

 astronomer, M. Janssen, who is determined to erect 

 a wooden building on the frozen snow of the 

 mountain. It is to be about 26 ft. long, 17 ft. wide, 

 and will consist of two rooms. This building will 

 rest on six screw-jacks, so as to restore any dis- 

 turbance caused by changes in the snow. Indeed, 

 the building is now actually being made in Paris, and 

 will shortly be transferred thence in sections to 

 Switzerland, and hauled up to the place appointed 

 from Chamounix. On the top of Mont Blanc the 

 astronomer will be 15,000 ft. nearer the stars, and 

 above the lower strata of the earth's atmosphere, in 

 which clouds and rains are manufactured. 



Mr. Sutton, the well-known grass seedsman, and 

 Dr. Frankland have been investigating the relative 

 amount of nourishment of the best kind contained in 

 grasses. The results will be received with some 

 surprise by agriculturists generally. They find that 

 the best hay is made from grass that is only seven 

 or eight inches high. It contains the richest store of 

 nutriment at that stage. Moreover, the grass cut, 

 tends to grow better and stronger. Even when grass 

 is in the flowering state only, the experimenters 

 found a very great difference in the nutritious proper- 

 ties of the hay made from it and that from the young 

 grass above mentioned. Of course when the grass 

 has passed into its seeding stage, its nutritious 

 properties have considerably decreased, whilst it has 

 become very much more indigestible. 



Professor Frankland in his lecture at the 

 Royal Institution on micro-organisms connected with 

 the soil, showed not only their power of nitrifying it, 

 but also, quite contrary to hitherto accepted beliefs, 

 that some of them can undergo enormous multiplica- 

 tion even in ordinary distilled water. The process of 

 nitrification in the soil is the work of two in- 

 dependent organisms, one of which converts ammonia 

 into nitrous acid, and the other nitrous acid into 

 nitric acid. Professor Frankland appears to think 

 that the immense deposits of nitrate of soda in the 

 rainless districts of Peru and Chili represent the 

 result of a gigantic nitrification progress. Close on 

 half a million tons of nitrate are annually imported 

 into Europe, all of which may have been rendered 

 possible through the existence of these nitrifying 

 microbes. What does the great Nitrate King 

 (Colonel North) say to this scientific statement of 

 the origin of that vast wealth which enables him to 

 spend so much money in trying and failing to win 

 the Derby. 



A VERY interesting and profitable paper on 

 English climatology has been read at the Meteoro- 

 logical Society by Mr. F. C. Bayard. He proved 

 (what has long been known) that seaside places are 

 warm in winter and cool in summer, whilst at inland 



stations the reverse is the case. The highest 

 temperature both inland and along the coast is in 

 July and August, and the coldest in December and 

 January. Contrary to what many people would 

 suppose, seaside places are not so humid as inland. 

 The cloudiest district in England is the south-west, 

 and the least cloudy (during the summer months) is 

 the southern. Again, contrary to general opinion, 

 April is the least rainy month in the year, and 

 November the heaviest. The amount of rainfall 

 is greatest in the west and least in the east, and 

 gradually decreases across England from the former 

 to the latter coasts. 



Of all the artificial manures the farmer has to 

 employ in the growth and development of the plants 

 he takes under his charge, nitrate of soda is the one 

 which ought to be most specially studied. It depends 

 upon the intelligence of the farmer as to whether it 

 should do service as an enemy or as a friend. At 

 present these nitrates come from South America, 

 where it is believed they were accumulated under 

 special climatal conditions by the action of microbes, 

 and subsequently leached out into beds. This 

 suggests the idea that it is possible for a farmer to 

 grow his own nitrates without buying any from his 

 manure merchant. For many years past it has been 

 an established rule of fact amongst English farmers 

 that cereal crops always grow best on land which had 

 previously been occupied by clover, trefoil, peas, or 

 some other leguminous crop. After the latter had 

 been cropped, the soil was found to be actually 

 richer in nitrogen than it was before. This led the 

 late Professor Ville, the distinguished scientific 

 agriculturist, to believe that the lugiminosa had the 

 direct power of tapping and assimilating the nitrogen 

 of the atmosphere. The clever idea is now known 

 to be correct. It is not the leaves of leguminous 

 plants, but the roots, which do the work of nitrifica- 

 tion. The latter are crowded with minute wart-like 

 lumps, which are simply so many nests of bacteria. 

 It is the latter which nitrificate the soil, and somehow 

 or another they and the luguminous plants get on 

 better than any other. It is just on the cards, there- 

 fore, to be possible for a scientific farmer to grow his 

 crops in such a successive order that he need not buy 

 any nitrate of soda, but artificially produce it on his 

 own land instead. In a most thoughtful and sug- 

 gestive paper by Mr. F. W. Burbidge, the distin- 

 guished curator of the Dublin Botanic Gardens, 

 recently read at a meeting of the Horticultural Club, 

 he says, speaking on this subject, " especially should 

 the cultivator take note of the modern observations 

 as to the storage or fixation of atmospheric nitrogen 

 by bacteria that inhabit the root-nodules of many 

 leguminous plants, such as peas, lupins, clover, etc., 

 for we may some day grow our own nitrogen far 

 cheaper than we can buy it from Colonel North or 

 the vendor of manures." 



