MICROBE'S NEW MISSION.

Bush Advocate, Volume XX, Issue 1000, 11 April 1908, Page 5

MICROBE'S NEW MISSION.

.». MIRACLE OF THE GARDKX. LONDON, February 7. J'rofessor Bottomley yoste-ihs.v revealed a mystery wliich he has' Keen nursing for many months. l{ has been generally held for nearly twenty years that tho growth of pi's: «»l-i despends largely on the prose 1m ;i l>ac'teria, some in the soil an' oiiie on the roots. They are of many sorts. The most mysterious group has the power of extracting free nitrogen from the air and transferring this essential substance to clovers, beans, and other leguminous plants. A special colony ot tliese have been under tho microscope in King's College for six months, and the first photograph was shown by Professor Bottomley yesterday. Every man of science in the. hall cheered the spectacle of these dots on the roots, for they revealed a now marvel. The bacteria, after years of inquiry, have been actually" and, visibly harnessed to a new York"' Professor Bottomley is tho first man to have attached these "nitrogenfixers" to plants which are not leguminous. By watering the roots or seeds of tomatoes, strawberries, wheat, barley, and oats with bacterial solution he ha? increased their growth by something like a third. It is yet more important that the maturity is immensely accelerated. A gardener, as a result of using bacteria solution, has sold beans in Covent Gardens six weeks after the seed was sown — an incident that .sounds miraculous. By inoculating the seed of lucerne and clover several crops have been increased by 25 per cent on barren ground at the cost of 6d an acre, and it is claimed that this system of inoculating seeds and soi] »wr conm-h tho roughest nioorlanJ into good agricultural land worth, perhaps, several pounds an acre. ;. If, as Professor Bottomley elainis to have discovered, this can" be done also for wheat, fruit, and Brussels sprouts, we have the most important discovery made for years. : :