1881 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
311 
Nitrogen as Nitric Acid. 
BY DR. .T. B. LA WES, ROTHAMSTED, ENGLAND. 
In one of the arable fields at Rothamsted 
we placed, ten years ago, three gauges, each 
having an area of '/,ooo of an acre, at the vari¬ 
ous depths of 20, 40, and 60 inches below the 
surface. The operation was performed with¬ 
out any disturbance of the soil, and no vege¬ 
tation is allowed to grow upon the area occu¬ 
pied by the drain gauges themselves. Close 
to them is a rain gauge of a similar size. 
We obtain by this arrangement a knowledge 
of the rain-fall, and also of the amount of 
rain water which passes through the soil at 
different depths. From time to time analyses 
have been made of the water passing through 
the soil, and latterly the whole of the Nitric 
Acid and Chlorine which the water contained 
has been determined. The results are in 
course of publication. I do not propose, 
therefore, on the present occasion, to do more 
than point out the important bearing these in¬ 
vestigations have upon practical agriculture. 
The whole liistory of Nitric Acid, as regards 
its bearing upon vegetation, is of quite recent 
date. The time is within my own recollec¬ 
tion when it was a question of doubt whether 
the effect of Nitrate of Soda on vegetation 
was due to the Nitrogen or the Soda. At the 
present time it may be said that every farmer 
has an interest in Nitric Acid, and that a cor¬ 
rect knowledge of its properties and action,, 
with relation to our soil and crops, must be 
the basis of all agricultural science. 
The amount of Nitrogen which passes 
through the Rothamsted drain gauges every 
year since they were established, if calculated 
upon an acre of land, would exceed 40 lbs. in 
weight. I have made an estimate of the 
Nitrogen contained in the crops grown in the 
United States, taking as my basis the average 
produce over the whole country for ten years, 
and the amount removed per acre would be 
very much less than this. Upon ordinary 
arable land, therefore, which is not particu¬ 
larly fertile, and has remained uncropped 
and at rest, more Nitrogen passes each year 
through the soil than we should find in an 
ordinary crop of grain, potatoes, or hay, grown 
in the States. Let us add to this fact three 
others. (1.) That the water passing through 
these gauges is much richer in Nitrogen than 
the rain which falls upon them. (2.) That it 
is richer in Nitrogen in the autumn than at 
any other time of the year. (3.) That the 
drainage water collected in another field, 
where a crop of wheat was in luxuriant 
growth, contained no Nitric Acid at all, and 
we have before us a basis from which some 
very important conclusions can be drawn. 
We learn that the most important ingredi¬ 
ent of the food of all plants, as also the most 
expensive when used artificially, is continu¬ 
ally produced in our soils, is continually mov¬ 
ing about, continually being taken up by 
vegetation, and continually being washed 
away and lost. Such being the case, it fol¬ 
lows as a necessary consequence that the 
amount of Nitrogen that analysis has proved 
to be contained in our crops is not a correct 
measure of the exhaustion of this substance, 
but we must add to it the amount of Nitric 
Acid which is lost from the crop being unable 
to take it up from one cause or another. I 
will endeavor to explain my meaning by an 
illustration taken from an ordinary operation 
in farming. A farmer sows two fields, one 
with Wheat only, one with Wheat and Tim¬ 
othy, Clover, Rye-grass, or an assortment of 
these plants. The Wheat is sown before the 
seeds, and takes the largest share of the light 
and food : soon after blooming the Wheat 
ceases to gather food from the soil, and in 
the early summer, the crop being ripe, is 
carried away. The seeds- are thus relieved 
from a powerful antagonist, and, having com¬ 
plete possession of the soil, continue to grow 
both above and below it until they are stopped 
by frost; even then it is probable that the 
roots, which are beneath the region of frost, 
grow and collect food. 
Assuming the wheat field not sown with 
grass to be without weeds at the time of har¬ 
vest, and afterwards (a very improbable as¬ 
sumption, I admit) it would resemble the soil 
of my drain gauges, and be subject to the 
same losses from the washing out of the 
Nitric Acid by the winter rains. A high tem¬ 
perature is favorable to the production of 
Nitric Acid in our soil, and the collecting 
power of the Wheat has ceased before the 
highest temperature of the summer has been 
reached. We may make an imaginary sum 
of the result as follows : 
Lbs. of Nitrogen washed aioay per acre. 
From soil without vegetation..40 
From soil with Wheat, 15 lbs. retained by crop.25 
From soil with Wheat and seeds—retained by Wheat, 
15 lbs.; by seeds, 25 lbs. 5 
Green vegetation is the great agent by 
which Nitric Acid is converted into insoluble 
forms; it is evident, therefore, that before 
we can assign to any of our crops their proper 
economic function in a rotation, we must 
take into account both the length of time 
to which the period of their growth extends, 
and also the range and depth of their roots. 
The tendency of the Rothamsted experiments 
is eveiy year 1 leading us more and more to 
the conclusion, that the source of Nitrogen 
in our crops is to be found in the amount 
of that substance stored up in our soils. If 
further investigation should establish this to 
be absolutely true, the current ideas with re¬ 
gard to the properties of several of our crops 
will require considerable modification. 
Seedling Peaches and Other Fruits. 
Our cultivated fruits are unnatural or, 
more properly, abnormal products. In the 
natural state the fruit serves to protect and 
nourish the seed until its growth is perfected. 
When the fruit falls to the ground it, in many 
cases, decays and nourishes the young plants 
that spring from the seeds it contains. Many 
fruits are pulpy and attractive to birds, no 
doubt to induce them to eat them, and thus 
aid in scattering the seeds far and wide. 
Through many ages of cultivation, the pulpy 
portions of edible fruits have been greatly in¬ 
creased in size, and they are all in this respect 
very different from the fruit of the same 
plants in the wild state, and also very differ¬ 
ent from one another. When the seeds of 
these unnatural fruits are sown they produce 
trees, the fruits of which may in some rare 
instances be better than those from which the 
seeds came, but in the vast majority of seed¬ 
lings the fruit is poorer than that of the 
parent tree. In view of this uncertainty in 
reproducing fruits by seeds, we make use of 
budding, grafting, layers, cuttings, or what¬ 
ever will sub-divide and continue the plant 
itself. Among cultivated fruits none are so 
nearly reproduced true from seed as the 
peach. If the stone of a good peach be 
planted, the tree that springs from it is very 
likely to produce peaches which, though they 
may not be exactly like the original, will be 
very good peaches. It is for this reason that 
the country is full of excellent seedling 
peaches. But in the peach trade, uniformity 
in the fruit is very desirable, and though an 
orchard of seedling peaches might yield many 
excellent fruits,yet for the market, the grower 
must have the product of his trees all alike, 
hence he buds them to make sure of this. 
There are some varieties of the peach that 
reproduce themselves from seed with a great 
deal of certainty. Take the “ Columbia,” one 
of the oldest of our peaches, for example. The 
seed of this is very sure to produce a tree 
that will give excellent fruit closely resemb¬ 
ling the parent; these seedlings have been 
raised in various parts of the country, and 
have been given distinct names, but when the 
fruit is compared with that of the original 
“ Columbia,” it is not possible to find any real 
difference. The old “ Indian Blood,” or 
“Blood Clingstone,” is another peach that 
reproduces itself very closely. Several of the 
newer early peaches of the past few years 
are so much alike, that if one of each is placed 
upon a plate, our most skilled pomologists con¬ 
fess themselves unable to distinguish them 
with certainty, yet they are no doubt distinct 
seedlings. We are led to these remarks by 
several letters of inquiry as to the reproduc¬ 
tion of cultivated fruits by seed. The peach, 
from the fact that it comes into bearing sooner 
than other fruit trees, has been watched more 
closely than other fruits, and we find that in 
the case of the peach, the reproduction is 
often, so far as the fruit goes, identical with 
that of the parent. A case in point comes 
from Mr. E. Bauer, the Secretary of the Wash¬ 
tenaw Co. (Mich.) Pomological Society, who 
states that peaches are promising remarkably 
well in that County, and that those who were 
so fortunate as to have planted “ Hill’s Chili,” 
are likely to have nearly a full crop. “ Hill’s 
Chili,” is an old variety from Central New 
York, which has of late come into prominence 
on account of its hardiness. At a recent 
meeting of the Washtenaw Society, the Secre¬ 
tary informs us, there were statements made 
as to the reproduction of this variety from 
the seed, and that several members testified 
to the fact that this variety, when raised from 
the seed, was improved in the hardiness of 
the tree as well as in the quality of the fruit. 
The Secretary asks our opinion on the sub¬ 
ject. Our opinion is, that the fact that the 
seedlings are an improvement upon the origi¬ 
nal indicates uncertainty in this mode of 
propagation, just as much as would a dete¬ 
rioration in quality. It illustrates the fact 
that to reproduce a peach or other fruit with 
absolute certainty and exactness, we must 
bud or graft. If we propagate by seeds we 
take a risk, and that an improvement upon 
the original shows the uncertainty of this 
method as strikingly as would deterioration. 
We have no doubt that those who have 
orchards of “ Hill’s Chili,” raised from seed, 
will find a lack of thorough uniformity in the 
size and color of the fruit, time of ripening, 
etc., and it will be well to select trees that 
show any real improvement upon the original 
to propagate from, for it is almost certain 
that a continuous reproduction from seed 
will result in a very uneven and mixed crop. 
