LOVE AMONG THE MOLECULES

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 29, 4 February 1928, Page 14

LOVE AMONG THE MOLECULES

In explaining the art of garden fertilising the "New Zealand Smallholder'* says: "When we make artificial manures we take violent liberties with chemistry, pausing -various elements to 'change partners,' as it were, Elements have their favourites just as much as people have, and when they are incompatibly wedded they seize the first opportunity to spring back to their more cherished alliances.' The cherished alliances are those in which they are found linked up in nature. The natural mating of phosphoric aeid and lime, for instance, is in a three-lime form—that is, three molecules of lime tc* one molecule of phosphoric acid. The big manure factories have to use powerful means (sulphurio acid) to break them apart. The result Is then a mass in which each sulphuric acid molecule has stolen two of the lime moleeules (forming sulphate of lime or gypsum or plaster of paris), leaving the phosphoric acid with only one of its lime molecules in each yttle chemical bundle. In this forlorn state the one-lime phosphate is soluble in water, and it spreads in the soil moiaure in a pathetic search for Its lost i lit! v- v Thes ® U fln ds chiefly in the i* futile soil contains. On rh™ ft three-lime cquilib- £ . is n ° ionger soluble in S . K spread abroad all-nervadinw 7* createß an r T r v nn,(,nt of fertility toots." 7 * ba ° rbed b y the plant