EVOLUTION IN CULTURAL PROCESSES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 7

EVOLUTION IN CULTURAL PROCESSES.

A peep into the xissible future of advancement in the cultivation of crops 'a <nven in a recent article published in tr» Revue General© de Chimie. According to the author of the article, " We can already foresee with the greatest certainty ?. new evolution iv cultural processes. As <vitti the physico-chemical sciences, including the agronomic sciences, it seems that this century may be for agriculture the debut o* a strangely brilliant era which will differ from our epoch as greatly as does ours from its predecessor. However proud we may be of the progress we have accomplished in agriculture, it may be said that our methods do not differ essentially from primitive practices; they are only improvements. But once the mechanism of a particular fact is known exactly—the fertilisation of the earth, the formation of reserves of hydrocarbons in beetroot or corn, for example,—not only will it become possible to verify and regulate these phenomena, to modify them or to bring about a certain desired end with absolute certainty, but to realise them and perfect them by artificial means. T'hus, vegetable synthase: are produced by diastases. An injection of artificial oxydases "will some day permit of doubling the weight of beet or its saccharine content." The nitrogen problem, the author believes, will be solved by new varieties of microbes'! which will fix the necessary nitrogen without the intervention of artificial fertilisers. He also recommends the removal from agricultural land of the vegetable excreta which now pollutes it, and sometimes stultifies tine effect of manures to the point of sterility. Catalysers—chemical agencies—will also bo used instead of ploughing and harrowing the land, and will also obviate the necessitv for its lying fallow. This, of course, will reduce the labour to a minimum.