68 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
beans, peas, and other legumes do not respond so well as 
grasses and the common grains to nitrogenous fertilizers. 
They have the power of gathering the nitrogen from the 
air; that is, they can acquire this valuable ingredient for 
themselves if they have a sufficient amount of the other ele- 
ments of plant food at the disposal of their roots in the soil.* 
They give good yields with mineral fertilizers, as phosphoric 
acid, potash salts, ashes, lime, plaster, and the like. The 
legumes contain large proportions of nitrogen. When fed to 
stock they supply the nitrogen which ordinary hay, straw, corn 
stalks and corn meal lack, and thus help to make well-balanced 
rations. ‘They make manure rich in nitrogen. ‘The stubble 
and roots left behind in the soil, like the stems, leaves, and 
seeds used for fodder, contain large amounts of nitrogen, and 
this becomes available for succeeding crops. And finally they 
seem to otherwise favor the accumulation of nitrogen in the 
soil. In all these ways they help the farmer to the nitrogen 
needed for manure, crops, and fodder. 
The farmer can increase his nitrogen supply, then, by pur- 
chase, or by growing legumes. He can buy it in nitrate of 
soda, sulphate of ammonia, fish scrap, tankage, and other 
nitrogenous commercial fertilizers; or he can buy it in the con- 
centrated nitrogenous foods like cotton seed meal, linseed meal, 
or wheat bran; or he can grow leguminous crops and get it 
from the air for nothing. In buying nitrogenous fertilizers he 
pays out his money and in return gets material to improve his 
fodder for his stock, and to make better manure on his farm to 
improve his crops. In growing legumes he pays out nothing 
for the nitrogen they gather from the air and at the same time 
he has the material to improve the fodder for his stock and the 
manure for his crops. The nitrogen in plant food and its rela- 
tion to the growth and value of farm crops has been one of the 
principal subjects of investigation by the Storrs Station since it 
was first organized. The work has been done not only in the 
laboratory, but also in the field, and, with the rest, a large 
number of experiments have been made by farmers in differ- 
ent parts of the State who have codperated with the Station 
by conducting tests on their own farms. 

* See Storrs Station Bulletin No. 5, Oct., 1889, and Annual Reports for 1889 and 1890, 
for accounts of experiments on this subject. 
