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The fixing of the nitrogen from the atmosphere in order to form nitrates available as manure depends, from the physical point of view, upon the creation of a sufficient heat to set fire to it.
Science would say, you only require certain combinations of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, to sustain all the activities of the physical body. Apparently, this is true. Upon the surface it is, but in reality it is not; because if it were really true there could be no famines. Science could make bread out of stones, as was suggested at the temptation of Christ in the wilderness.
The crops soon exhaust the nitrogen, and as clover and the common alfalfas can not grow there, the problem of finding legumes has been the most serious one facing this new region; but in Siberia the Agricultural Department has recently found a new clover and three varieties of alfalfa that will stand the cold, and Secretary Wilson believes that these will solve the problem.
I understand that the farmers who use this common commercial fertilizer, apply about three hundred pounds of it to the acre perhaps twice in four years. That would cost about eight dollars for the four years, and the total nitrogen applied in the two applications would amount to 10 pounds per acre." "It is not quite correct to call 'phosphoric acid' and potash plant food elements.
We have no very absolute knowledge as to the agency of bacteria in furnishing nitrogen for this vegetation in past ages, but there is every reason to believe that in the past, as in the present, the chief source of organic nitrogen has been from the atmosphere and derived from the atmosphere through the agency of bacteria.
"Of course the organic matter of the soil should increase under pasturing, especially under conditions that make possible an accumulation of nitrogen; but here too the animals make no contribution toward any such accumulation. With the same growth of plants the accumulation of organic matter would be much more rapid without live stock."
The use of better seed produces larger crops, but only at the expense of the soil. Even the farm manure is so limited and is spread so thinly with manure-spreaders made for the purpose that it adds but little to the soil in comparison with the crops removed and sold in grain and hay as well as in meat and milk. Clover, as commonly produced and harvested, adds little or no nitrogen to the soil.
Furthermore, the winds at night are very damp; the cold is intensely penetrating. Fuel is exceedingly scarce, there is barely enough for cooking purposes, and none for artificial heat. Food is hard to get. Few crops can be grown at 12,500 feet. Some barley is raised, but the soil is lacking in nitrogen.
It is the same matter that we eat and drink. It is the same that we breathe. It is the same that we see aflame in our lamps and grates. It is the same that is borne to us in the fragrance of flowers planted on the graves of our dead. It is the common hydrogen and carbon and oxygen and nitrogen of our earth and its envelope.
Then too, as in syrup, there are different amounts of the two substances in the mixture: as syrup is made up of about one-quarter sugar and three-quarters water, so air is made up of one-fifth oxygen and four-fifths nitrogen.
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