THE SCIENCE OF THE SOIL.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12897, 7 February 1906, Page 3

THE SCIENCE OF THE SOIL.

The farmer of the past was -?a mere husbandman; now he is chiefly a husbandman and something of a chemist; some day he will be chiefly a. chemist, and the mere husbanding w iU be treated as of secondary consideration. The Rothamsted (England) Agricultural Experimental College, founded by John Lawes, is onlv one of many institutions which advance and support this view; but. because of its ace and perseverance it has the best data to advance in support of the doctrine. The idea ofc sowing one year for one thing and th* w" 1 • ! s ** aekaowledgement that n Vmma master ' but &° »<*W master and the way he can show his authority is by cultivation, chiefly l£ n-a nuring. To prove tins the Co'llece has a plot of land on which wheat been seventy years without the addition of an ounce of anything. What is more, the professors have had certain plots under « purposely kept barren to test and record f"i f S shovr ' m S ****> Careful treatment has led to. it is computed that tt » man had an acre of tlie same soil, and it was handed down, father to son, wheat or any other crop could be -rowni Z£ A lth ° Ut . withouTZ for four hundred vears. SL ? 6 ?™ 1 : as ,. a result of wh:it has been done to u, is alive with vigorous bacteria. M iu SOj1 ' at 'Wars, is alive, though whether it is vigorous or not comes otrt ■in what.it grows. The College, in company with others, has demonstrated that nitrate is the chief food of plant lif- that nitrogenous material is converted into nitrate, and that this work is done bv living organisms which thus build up the plant But here comes in the instructive part—mtrate manure is the dearest artificial f*rtdiser that tie farmer can use; but fourfifths of the atmosphere is nitrogen, and the College has its dream, perhaps, that science Trill yet discover how to capture it. m the interests of agriculture as an ordinary feature of everyday farming life. At present all the farmer can command in we way of nitrogen in the soil is : (1) What, is produced and has been produced in the soil itself by the nitrification by bacteria of. the inherent organic matter which has been - accumulating therein for ages by forest and other growths and vegetable decay.

(2) What he puts into it, and his predecessors have, pat into it, hi the form; of dung, which bacteria eventually nitrify. (3) What he pats into it as purchased nitrogenous manures. ■

(4) What is brought down in the form of ammonia and'nitrous or nitric acid. (5) What is produced in the soil by those bacteria (distinct from the forms'-previously referred to) which form the well-known nodoles on -the roots of vetches, lupins, peas, beans, clover and sainfoin, and by absorbing nitrogen enable the plant to avail itself jof the .supplies of gas which penetrate the ground from the open air.

When science has discovered in its entirety what it has already discovered in a large part, how to feed the land on a commercially paying basis for anything wanted, farming will become in ordinary circumstances merely a question of supply and demand, and the " rotation of crops" to save the soil will be a thing of the past."