Last summer I went to an agricultural college. I had been
under the delusion that black clods turned to strawberries,
and that red clay ripened apples and wheat shocks. One day the
professor handed me a large microscope to study two blades of
corn, growing in a little pot of earth. Now there was something
lacking in the soil. The little stock was yellow, sickly, and
come to the moment of death. It throbbed a little, but the pulse
beat low. What was the matter? All it needed was nitrogen.
Nitrogen? Why there were billions of tons of nitrogen in the
air, forty miles thick. When a man has pneumonia he dies, not
because there are not billions of tons of oxygen above him,
but because he can not absorb the oxygen. The soil could not
help the dying corn plant. The rain could not help it--poor
little plant that pants and pants, because it can not get that
invisible nourishment in nitrogen. So we took a little liquor
that held a few nodules from a nitrogenous alfalfa root, and
poured it about the dying blade of corn. In a single hour the
pulse began to beat true and firm; another morning came and
the sickly yellow had changed to green. In a week the corn was
growing like a weed. Out in the field were two acres of corn,
sown broadcast. One acre was in the starved soil and yielded
nine hundred pounds of fodder; the other acre yielded over ten
thousand pounds, through that rich invisible food.
Not otherwise is it with the soul.--N. D. HILLIS.
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