252 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
No. 11. — On the Importance as Plant-food of the Nitrogen in 
Vegetable-mould. By F. TH. Storer, Professor of Agricul- 
tural Chemistry. 
In the course of numerous experiments upon the growth of plants 
in various kinds of soils, which have been made in the glass-house of 
the Bussey Laboratory during the last three years, I have been re- 
peatedly impressed by the extreme facility with which plants can. 
obtain from ordinary peat or loam a supply of nitrogen sufficient for 
their vigorous growth, provided the ash-ingredients necessary to the 
life of the plant are at hand, that the earth is kept moist, and moder- 
ately warm, and that it is in good mechanical condition. 
There is, really, little of novelty in the observation, which must have 
often been made already, in respect to plants grown in flower-pots ac- 
cording to the ordinary niethods of domestic life. The fact is exhibited, 
moreover, in nature, upon a stupendous scale, and is so familiar in one 
sense that it almost seems idle to discuss it. But it is none the less 
true, upon the other hand, that the precise significance for practical 
agriculture of the supplies of nitrogen natural to the soil has never 
been made clear, and that the discussion of the subject is beset 
with many doubts and uncertainties that need to be removed. It 
would seem indeed, at first sight, that the familiar fact that a plant 
may grow even: luxuriantly in a pot of loam to which nothing but 
rain-water is added, must be inconsistent with another fact equally 
familiar, — namely, that the fertility of a vast number of soils rich in 
“humus” is greatly increased by the application of nitrogenous ma-— 
nures, — and be absolutely contradicted by the experiments of Boussin- 
gault,* which have hitherto seemed to prove that a fertile garden soil 
has little if any more power than so much sand to supply plants with 
nitrogen. 
It is because of these seeming contradictions, no doubt, that the 
power which the organic matters in the soil really possess of supplying 
* See his work entitled ‘‘ Agronomie, Chimie Agricole et Physiologie,” Paris, 
1860, 1. pp. 283-359. Compare Johnson’s “ How Crops Feed,’ New York, 
1870, p. 280. The earth used in Boussingault’s experiments contained 0.26% 
of nitrogen. 
