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V. Jlie Nitrifying Process and its Specific Ferment. —Part 1. 
By Percy F. Frankland, FJi.D., B.Sc. {Lond.), A.R.S.^[., F'.T.C., Professor 
of Chemistry in University College, Dundee, and Grace C. Frankland. 
Communicated hy Professor Thorpe, F.R.S. 
Received February 28,—Read March 13, 1890. 
The spontaneous oxidation of nitrogen in nature is a process winch has long attracted 
attention in consequence of the great practical importance of the products to whicli it 
gives rise. Indeed, so great is the demand for potassium nitrate, nitre, or saltpetre, 
the principal derivative of the oxidised nitrogen, that the process of nitrification 
is often artificially stimulated by placing nitrogen, in the form of refuse animal 
matter, under the most favourable conditions for undergoing this change. The 
process of nitrification has thus been ca,rried on for ages as a regular industry in 
India, and even in some European countries, thus especially in France during the 
Great Blockade. For a number of years past, however, the principal source of nitric 
acid and its derivatives has been the enormous deposits of nitrate of soda occurring 
in South America, which deposits themselves may, however, possibly be the product 
of a vast nitrification-process in a former period of the Earth’s history. 
But although nitrification had thus been practically studied for centuries, it was 
only in 1878 that the process was shown by Schlgesing and Muntz (‘Compt. 
Rend.,’ vol. 84, p. 301 ; 85, p. 1018) to be a fermentation change, and entirely 
dependent upon the presence of certain minute forms of life or micro-organisms. But 
although this connection was thus first experimentally demonstrated in 1878, it had 
with characteristic foresight been already surmised by Pasteur in 1862. 
In the communication referred to above, these investigators clearly show that the 
process only takes place under conditions compatible with the life and growth of 
micro-organisms, and is immediately arrested by conditions, such as the application 
of strong heat or antisejjtics, which are fatal to these forms of life. They further 
showed, moreover, that the nitrification-process could be induced by the introduction 
into suitable materials of the minutest quantity of matter from a medium already 
undergoing nitrification. 
In the same year these remarkable results were fully confirmed by VVarington 
(‘Chem. Soc. Journ.,’ 1878, p. 44), who further greatly extended our knowledge of 
p 2 1.11.90. 
