i66 
Economy of Nitrogen . 
I April, 
awaking to a faint consciousness that his resources are 
limited, and that “ something must be done.” Before us — 
and by “ us ” we mean not merely the British nation, but 
the entire civilised world — there lie open two courses. We 
may go on as we are now doing, increasing in wastefulness 
even more rapidly than in numbers, and presenting our 
drafts upon Nature till the reply at last comes “ No effedfs.” 
Or we may take the advice which Science has given us by 
the mouth of Liebig, and amend our ways. Pending the 
great discovery of the industrial utilisation of atmospheric 
nitrogen, we must look with a jealous eye upon every appli- 
cation of nitrogen, and also of phosphorus and of potash, 
other than for food or medicine. We must proscribe the 
use of nitrogenous bodies for all purposes to which such 
nitrogen is not essential. We must restore to the land all 
that we take from the land, in forms capable of assimilation. 
We must either seek to restridt the use of explosives, or we 
must find bodies of this class whose manufacture shall not 
rob our fields and gardens. We must obtain our sizings, 
our thickeners, our mordants, our vinegar, our alcohol, 
from bodies free from or at least poor in nitrogen. How 
much of the programme may lie within the bounds of pos- 
sibility the future only can show. Shall we ever succeed in 
obtaining food diredt from its inorganic elements without 
the tedious and circuitous interposition of plants and ani- 
mals ? If so, the future of the human race may be both 
longer and brighter than we can at present dare to hope. 
Meantime, to economise nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash, 
to recover these bodies from waste, and to find substitutes 
for their present “ profligate ” applications, is the most 
sacred task which the chemist can take in hand. The 
reforms which may shield us from occasional pestilence 
sink into insignificance compared with those required to 
guard posterity, in a not very remote future, from chronic 
scarcity, from recurrent famine, and from a wolfish struggle 
for food, in which man must relapse into a worse savagery 
than that from which he has emerged. 
