A SOIL PHENOMENON

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1015, 3 January 1911, Page 8

A SOIL PHENOMENON

USEFUL DISCOVERY. One of the'mo.U relnarkable phenomena which'.came 'under the notice'of the Brit-' ish Association during tho recent .meet-, ing' at Sheffield ..,was first noticed in ths ..president's address to the agricultural sub-section, and was more fully exnlained in the paper subsequently read before the sr.uip sub-section (reports the London "Standard"). It concerns the life in soils and the curious way in which the fertility'of the soil is aft'ccted by tlid life of the microbes which live ,!in #;■ and.cmliodies ,tho ; mo^t. important -discovery that lias been; made; £6r, 5.3 years, S3 far as relates to agriculture. " It ha« been known for many years- that all kinds of natural manure are slowly turned into plant food by tho action of certain bacteria. It was natural, therefore, to exnect' that the more there were of these beneficent bacteria the greater would •be the-rate, at which-.the food would b?. prepared, for the crops. "Soil -sickness" -has; however, been found in soils rich in , these tiny, organisms. A counle of years ago Prs. Pussell and. Hutchinson discovered that sick soils might be' cured -by doses of chloroform 6r toluene ov by ' nftrtial sterilising •' by heat. -After i 'saiii lias been forced through the soil it recovered its fertility. • - Early last -vear, tho two experimentalists announced that they had accumulated a number of data which led them to believe 'that a'process was going on in the soil somewhat' similar- to -the nrocesses in blood. If a microbe entered the. blood through a wound it was immediately attacked bv the white corpuscles, whicn destroyed" it, but which themselves often died in the fight, and formed , pus, or festerin"' matter. of the samo kind wdre to be found in soil—little iellylike masses which ate nn tho foreign microbes. '■ The most successful experiments, following uibn this discovery, have been performed" on the. peculiarly rich soils which gardeners use for the cultivation of cucumbers and tomatoes, and most crops grown under glass.