PRODUCTION OF NITROGEN.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 101, 27 April 1909, Page 3

PRODUCTION OF NITROGEN.

i This is an age or research and discovery in thci field of agricultural science, .and new products are continually being placed before the cultivators of the soil. The production of amtirogeii in a cheap form is on© of the directions in which the experinaeniteire aire engaged, and it is now announced that a new product—calcium cyanide, now bnow.ii as nitroilim, marks a new era in. agricultural life. I* has been tested in England as in. other countries, 'and is found by Dr. Voelcker and Mi- Hall, .director of the experiment station .at Rothamsted, founded by Sir John Lawes, to be as productive as the older fertilisers. Nitrolim. is an extremely fine black powder, containing a similar quantity of nitrogen to sulphate of ammonia. It is already on the German and1 Italian, .market, where its price, based on-its nitcrogein percenitage, is lowetr than that of ■nitrate of isoda and sulphate of ammonia in England. Nitd-olim is now produced in Italy, Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, while works aire> being erected in panada which will be .haa-nessed to Niagara. Nitrolim is superior to nitrate, inasmuch as it is not so soluble; the latter is unsuitable for application on the lighter soils before or during heavy rains, owing to its high solubility. It passes into the subsoil drainage, and is lost, unless a .vigorous growing plaint is able to retain it. Not iso with mtirolim, which, assuming it ,to fail to feed the< crop it is intended for, remains to feed the next. Nitrolim will not work wonders on sand and soils deprived' of lime, but in ! this it resembles both nitrate and sulphate. It ca,n, be mixed (Successfully with basic slag, in, which phosphoric acid is combined with lime for us© on acid soils. Precisely how the nitrogen of nitrolim is taken up by plants we have yet to learn, but it is something to have found that it acts as Nature meant it. That it is decomposed in- the soil there' is no doubt, and that soil bacteria assist in its conversion into ammonia, and then into nitrate, is believed to be correct, but these are matters into which few, farmer® will inquire. What they will want to know is how much benefit is to be derived from its application.