Ihe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
523 
The Possibilities of Ch emical Food 
(There was printed, on page 219, an article by Dr. 
It. I.. Ruse on chemical food. I)r. Rose took the position 
that while the chemists may be able to produce syn¬ 
thetic food, such production cannot compete with the 
ordinary process of nature. We now have the following 
article by Dr. Carl I.. Alsberg. Chief of the United 
States Bureau of Chemistry.] 
THINK the farmers of the country need not. cer 
tainly for many generations to come, fear .ser¬ 
iously that the chemists will put the agriculturists 
forever out of business. The chemist has not as yet 
succeeded in producing artificial food without the 
intervention of agriculture, and there is no imme¬ 
diate prospect that he will do so for a long time to 
come. Even the production of butter substitutes is 
in no sense synthetic chemistry, since the materials 
from which they are made, peanut oil. cocoanut oil 
sfearine, cottonseed oil and other oils, are all agri¬ 
cultural products, even though one of them, cocoanut 
oil, is not produced in the United States, though it 
i> produced in the island possessions of the United 
States, namely, the Philippines. These are the 
largest cocoanut producers of the world. 
It is also true that in the Orient a 
product somewhat resembling milk 
superficially has been produced by 
grinding Soy beans with water between 
burrstones. and I have also heard that 
Prof. Carver has produced a similar 
product from peanuts. There is not. as 
far as I am aware, any commercial 
production of this particular article on 
any scale. Moreover, for a variety of 
reasons which any expert in nutrition 
can easily give you. such an article is 
in no sense a complete substitute for 
milk, although to be sure it has a high 
food value. Nevertheless it is not an 
article produced by synthetic chemis¬ 
try. The farmer has to raise the pea¬ 
nuts or the Soy beans from which it is 
produced. 
Essentially what the farmer does 
when he produces his crop is to store 
in the crop the sun's energy which im¬ 
pinges upon his cultivated land during 
the growing .period of the crop. In 
other words, the growing of food re¬ 
quires energy. The chemist, could not 
make foods synthetically without a 
source of free energy. The only sources 
available to him other than agricul¬ 
tural or forest products would be coal 
and water power. There can be no 
question that the supply of these avail- 
abb' from other purposes is entirely too 
small to make any considerable im¬ 
pression upon the world’s requirement 
of energy in the form of food. Until 
some one invents a more eflieient ma¬ 
chine than the chlorophyll of the leaves 
of green plants to store the energy con¬ 
tained in the sun’s radiation 1 think 
the farmers of the world need not fear 
seriously the competition of chemists. 
That a more efficient energy-storing 
machine than the green plant can be 
devised seems at the present, time alto¬ 
gether unlikely. So long as this is so, 
agriculture is safe. The nearest ap¬ 
proach to the conditions you fear is to 
be found in the production of proteins by yeast, from 
ammonium sulphate and fermentable sugars during 
the war in Germany. You may have read that the 
waste sulphite liquors of the paper pulp mills, which 
contain fermentable sugar, were there treated with 
ammonium sulphate from the by-product coke ovens 
and fermented with yeast. The product was yeast 
very rich in protein, which was used for cattle feed 
and alcolrol which was used for chemical and mili¬ 
tary purposes. This process then produced cattle 
food in the form of yeast without apparently the 
intervention of the land. As a matter of fact, the 
sugar which the yeast used as its source of energy 
was derived from wood, a product grown upon land. 
The energy stored in the sugar of the wood came, of 
course, through the trees' green leaves from tin* 
sun’s radiation. The ammonium sulphate used came 
from coal, which in the last analysis is also a 
product of the land ages ago in the carboniferous 
period, when the plants grew that formed the coal 
deposits. 
I think, therefore, you are quite safe in assuring 
your readers, though it may be possible to produce 
foods of a different character from what we use at 
tion. I am not writing an advertisement, but just 
passing along a good thing. That open spring would 
not he where it is if the underground stream had 
not met an obstruction that prevented its further 
progress beneath the surface, and in order to use 
this spring it is not at all necessary to let it remain 
at that precise spot, but form an artificial outlet for 
the water where it is needed. 
ITOW THE WORK IS DONE.—While it is an 
easy matter to install this economical and sanitary 
system of utilizing the spring, it is more difficult to 
explain it in an understanding way. Beginning at 
the point near the buildings where ithe water is 
needed, dig a ditch or trench up to and right through 
the spring, and don't he afraid that you are going 
to lose your spring. If the spring is of a considerable 
extent it may be necessary to dig some branches or 
Y’s through the springy spot. This trenching need 
or 9 ft. deep, as the running water 
If the bottom in the spring tract is 
soft use boards to lay the 3-in. tiles on. 
The joints of these tiles ought not to 
fit very tight. This tiling should ter¬ 
minate right where the hard ground 
that caused the spring to be here is 
located, and through which the trench 
has been dug. These trenches over the 
tile can now be filled in with a foot or 
more of gravel, and then completely 
filled with earth to the general surface 
level. Now this spot will always be 
dry land, and in short time one would 
not believe that a spring ever existed 
there. After the spring water has been 
running through this gravel and tile 
system for a short time, in order to 
drive out all loose sand and silt, iron 
piping can he laid in the trench to the 
buildings, the end at the spring enter¬ 
ing the tile for a few inches. Some¬ 
times I place a coarse screen over the 
end of this pipe, but this is not neces¬ 
sary if the upper end of each tile line 
is covered carefully with a brick or flat 
stone. Where the pipe enters the tile 
a solid dam of clay is placed. That 
will cause the water to run through 
the pipe line. Now we have moved the 
outlet of this spring and given it an¬ 
other location. If the flow from the 
spring is of considerable volume, an 
overflow can lie arranged just above the 
place where the pipe enters the tile by 
using a Y placed at a 45 degree angle, 
and connecting with some other drain 
or outlet, this to take care of the water 
if it comes at times faster than the 
pipe can take it. (See Fig. 212.) 
A Veteran Nete England Gardener and His Garden Friends. Fig. 21J t 
year. There are plenty of these old gardens which 
have produced crop after crop for 200 years—and 
this year’s crop will be best of all. It is the soil— 
and the gardener—men like Mr. Fiske—who know 
how to do it. He has lived all his life at Grafton. 
Mass. He is a member of Worcester Grange, and 
all the prominent agricultural societies, lie says he 
joined the Worcester County Society in 1S56, when 
It! years old, using the money obtained as a premium 
on a pair of steers. Mr. Fiske has lived a long and 
useful life, and he still excels as a gardener. 
PERMANENT VALUE.—'This is not 
only a very interesting work, but when 
rightly done is of great value, r have 
no patent on this method of harnessing 
up the spring, and am willing to give 
further explanation if necessary. With 
this system the spring cannot be fouled, 
as the water is filtered through the 
gravel before it enters the tiles. In 
fact, a pure water supply from this 
spring has been insured for all time, 
and the spring tract, rendered fit for cultivation or 
pasture. If the conditions permit sometimes I dig 
a trench to take the water from the spring off to one 
side or away, so as not to he obliged to work when 
the water is running; and after the job is completed 
this is all filled in so as to throw all the water back 
to the tiles and pipe. A good spring properly har¬ 
nessed up is a valuable asset to a farm. h. e. cox. 
New York. 
How to Harness Open Springs 
A voiding pollution.—i have had so much 
experience with springs and have given this 
manner of obtaining a water supply so much study 
that it seems strange that most people who are for¬ 
tunate enough to have springs on their property 
should still adhere to the old and positively unsani¬ 
tary practice of using water from an open spring, in 
which small animals often drown, and sometimes 
decay, before the trouble is discovered. These open 
springs are subject to many different kinds of pollu¬ 
Plowing Under Rye for Potato Crop 
In regard to potato scab in soil, page 435. while it i: 
too late this year, will say I have never known a croj 
of green rye plowed under fail to clean the land o 
potato scab. Sow rye after this potato crop is off am 
plow under next Spring. n. ii. a. 
W E have had many reports on the effect of plow 
ing under a green crop. The germs of tin 
scab disease do not develop rapidly in an acid soil 
Thus lime encourages their growth, while sulphui 
has the opposite effect. When rye or other green 
crops are plowed under and the soil left open an acic 
condition is developed, and the scab genius are slow 
to grow. 
present, they will all he derived in the last analysis 
through the sun's energy and from the land. 
A Garden and the Gardener 
M EN have their pictures taken under all sorts of 
conditions. Many of us like to show ourselves 
in connection with some object which reflects part 
of our life. Thus the journalist is pictured with his 
paper held in hand, the dairyman stands by his cow. 
the horseman mounts his steed, and many a man has 
been pictured with his dog. David I,. Fiske of 
Massachusetts, as is shown at Fig. 214. likes to be 
pictured while surrounded by his garden friends. 
We see him loooking out of a forest of tomato vines 
which run up far above his head. What gardens we 
may find in New England! People who never saw 
that part of the country like to joke about its poor 
and sterile soil, yet when properly handled it will 
produce tremendous crops and grow better with each 
not he over 2 
will not freeze. 
