Economy of Nitrogen . 
159 
1878.] 
kind of loss we must protest against the possible imputation 
of seeking to play into the hands of any sedt of world- 
betterers and social reformers. We are merely judging 
certain practices which mankind adopted in days of greater 
ignorance than the present, according to the light of modern 
chemical science, and pronouncing our verdidt without fear 
or favour, and utterly indifferent to the possible tendencies 
or applications of such decision. 
It is a threadbare story to tell our readers that Nature 
does not present us with her treasures in a state ready for 
our immediate use. Sometimes they are mixed or combined 
with things useless, or even pernicious, as pyrites with 
arsenic, or coal with sulphur. More frequently the admix- 
ture may consist of an ingredient inferior indeed in value, 
but still capable of use. But if we, in endeavouring to turn 
to account some such plentiful and inferior article, waste a 
far more valuable product with which it is blended, we may 
confess ourselves guilty of egregious folly. Let us suppose 
an ore containing gold and copper in the relative proportions 
of a shilling’s worth of the former to a pennyworth of the 
latter. Suppose, then, some metallurgist using this ore for 
the extraction of copper, and operating in such a manner 
as to render the gold utterly incapable of separation. He 
would be regarded as foolish and his process as wasteful, 
whether it was in itself remunerative or not. To waste a 
shilling’s worth of gold for the sake of extracting a penny- 
worth of copper would be considered as a culpable abuse of 
natural resources. Now in the cereals we find a mixture of 
substances somewhat analogous to the case which we have, 
for illustration’s sake, assumed. There is in them a very 
precious substance, — combined nitrogen in the form of 
gluten, — relatively small in quantity, but predominating in 
value ; and there is a substance of a very much lower value, 
— a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, in the form 
of starch. We are by no means denying that starch has its 
important uses, but it is a substance which Nature produces 
in almost indefinite amount, and its constituents are far 
more plentiful in the earth than is combined nitrogen. 
Hence we contend that if mankind, when in quest of starch 
or of some product of starch, take a substance containing 
starch in admixture with gluten, and waste the latter and 
more valuable product, they are adting just like the metal- 
lurgist whom we have been supposing, and are either igno- 
rantly or knowingly squandering the resources of the world. 
As the first instance of this economic sin we may mention 
the use of wheat-flour for purposes other than food. A very 
