THE INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM
_Fixing of Nitrogen--Experiments of Professor Nobbe_
No lad of to-day, ambitious to become a scientist or inventor, reading
of all the wonderful and revolutionising discoveries and inventions
of recent years, need fear for plenty of new problems to solve in the
future. No, the great problems have not all been solved. We have the
steam-engine, the electric motor, the telegraph, the telephone, the
air-ship, but not one of them is perfect, not one that does not bring to
the attention of inventors scores of entirely new problems for solution.
The further we advance in science and mechanics the further we see into
the marvels of our wonderful earth and of our life, and the more there
is for us to do.
As population increases and people become more intelligent there is
a constant demand for new things, new machinery which will enable the
human race to move more rapidly and crowd more work and more pleasure
into our short human life. One man working to-day with machinery can
accomplish as much as many men of a hundred years ago; he can live in a
house that would then have been a palace; enjoy advantages of education,
amusement, luxury, that would then have been possible only to kings and
princes.
And the very greatest of all the problems which the inventors and
scientists of coming generations must solve is the question--seemingly
commonplace--of food.
We who live in this age of plenty can hardly realise that food could
ever be a problem. But far-sighted scientists have already begun to look
forward to the time when there will be so many people on the earth
that the farms and fields will not supply food for every one. It is
a well-known fact that the population of the world is increasing
enormously. Think how America has been expanding; a whole continent
overrun and settled almost within a century and a half! Nearly all the
land that can be successfully farmed has already been taken up, and the
land in some of the older settled localities, like Virginia and the
New England States, has been so steadily cropped that it is failing in
fertility, so that it will not raise as much as it would years ago. In
Europe no crop at all can be raised without quantities of fertiliser.
While there was yet new country to open up, while America and Australia
were yet virgin soil, there was no immediate cause for alarm; but, as no
less an authority than Sir William Crookes pointed out a few years ago
in a lecture before the British Association, the new land has now
for the most part been opened and tamed to the plough or utilised
for grazing purposes. And already we are hearing of worn-out land in
Dakota--the paradise of the wheat producer. The problem, therefore, is
simple enough: the world is reaching the limits of its capacity for food
production, while the population continues to increase enormously:
how soon will starvation begin? Sir William Crookes has prophesied, I
believe, that the acute stage of the problem will be reached within the
next fifty years, a time when the call of the world for food cannot
be supplied. If it were not for our coming inventors and scientists it
would certainly be a gloomy outlook for the human race.
But science has already foreseen this problem. When Sir William Crookes
gave his address he based his arguments on modern agricultural methods;
he did not look forward into the future, he did not show any faith in
the scientists and inventors who are to come, who are now boys, perhaps.
He did not even take cognisance of the work that had already been done.
For inventors and scientists are already grappling with this problem of
food.
In a nutshell, the question of food production is a question of
nitrogen.
This must be explained. A crop of wheat, for instance, takes from the
soil certain elements to help make up the wheat berry, the straw, the
roots. And the most important of all the elements it takes is nitrogen.
When we eat bread we take this nitrogen that the wheat has gathered from
the soil into our own bodies to build up our bones, muscles, brains.
Each wheat crop takes more nitrogen from the soil, and finally, if
this nitrogen is not given back to the earth in some way, wheat will
no longer grow in the fields. In other words, we say the farm is
"worn out," "cropped to death." The soil is there, but the precious
life-giving nitrogen is gone. And so it becomes necessary every year to
put back the nitrogen and the other elements which the crop takes
from the soil. This purpose is accomplished by the use of fertilisers.
Manure, ground bone, nitrates, guano, are put in fields to restore the
nitrogen and other plant foods. In short, we are compelled to feed the
soil that the soil may feed the wheat, that the wheat may feed us. You
will see that it is a complete circle--like all life.
Now, the trouble, the great problem, lies right here: in the difficulty
of obtaining a sufficient amount of fertiliser--in other words, in
getting food enough to keep the soil from nitrogen starvation. Already
we ship guano--the droppings of sea-birds--from South America and the
far islands of the sea to put on our lands, and we mine nitrates (which
contain nitrogen) at large expense and in great quantities for the same
purpose. And while we go to such lengths to get nitrogen we are wasting
it every year in enormous quantities. Gunpowder and explosives are most
made up of nitrogen--saltpetre and nitro-glycerin--so that every war
wastes vast quantities of this precious substance. Every discharge of
a 13-inch gun liberates enough nitrogen to raise many bushels of wheat.
Thus we see another reason for the disarmament of the nations.
A prediction has been made that barely thirty years hence the wheat
required to feed the world will be 3,260,000,000 bushels annually, and
that to raise this about 12,000,000 tons of nitrate of soda yearly for
the area under cultivation will be needed over and above the 1,250,000
tons now used by mankind. But the nitrates now in sight and available
are estimated good for only another fifty years, even at the present low
rate of consumption. Hence, even if famine does not immediately impend,
the food problem is far more serious than is generally supposed.
Now nitrogen, it will be seen, is one of the most precious and necessary
of all substances to human life, and it is one of the most common. If
the world ever starves for the lack of nitrogen it will starve in a very
world of nitrogen. For there is not one of the elements more common than
nitrogen, not one present around us in larger quantities. Four-fifths of
every breath of air we breathe is pure nitrogen--four-fifths of all the
earth's atmosphere is nitrogen.
But, unfortunately, most plants are unable to take up nitrogen in its
gaseous form as it appears in the air. It must be combined with hydrogen
in the form of ammonia or in some nitrate. Ammonia and the nitrates are,
therefore, the basis of all fertilisers.
Now, the problem for the scientist and inventor takes this form: Here
is the vast store-house of life-giving nitrogen in the air; how can it
be caught, fixed, reduced to the purpose of men, spread on the hungry
wheat-fields? The problem, therefore, is that of "fixing" the nitrogen,
taking the gas out of the air and reducing it to a form in which it can
be handled and used.
Two principal methods for doing this have already been devised, both of
which are of fascinating interest. One of these ways, that of a clever
American inventor, is purely a machinery process, the utilisation of
power by means of which the nitrogen is literally sucked out of the air
and combined with soda so that it produces nitrate of soda, a high-class
fertiliser. The water power of Niagara Falls is used to do this work--it
seems odd enough that Niagara should be used for food production!
The other method, that of a hard-working German professor, is the
cunning utilisation of one of nature's marvellous processes of taking
the nitrogen from the air and depositing it in the soil--for nature has
its own beautiful way of doing it. I will describe the second method
first because it will help to clear up the whole subject and lead up to
the work of the American inventor and his extraordinary machinery.
Nearly every farmer, without knowing it, employs nature's method of
fixing nitrogen every year. It is a simple process which he has learned
from experience. He knows that when land is worn out by overcropping
with wheat or other products which draw heavily on the earth's nitrogen
supply certain crops will still grow luxuriantly upon the worn-out land,
and that if these crops are left and ploughed in, the fertility of the
soil will be restored, and it will again produce large yields of wheat
and other nitrogen-demanding plants. These restorative crops are clover,
lupin, and other leguminous plants, including beans and peas. Every one
who is at all familiar with farming operations has heard of seeding down
an old field to clover and then ploughing in the crop, usually in the
second year.
The great importance of this bit of the wisdom of experience was not
appreciated by science for many years. Then several German experimenters
began to ask why clover and lupin and beans should flourish on worn-out
land when other crops failed. All of these plants are especially rich
in nitrogen, and yet they grew well on soil which had been robbed of its
nitrogen. Why was this so?
It was a hard problem to solve, but science was undaunted. Botanists
had already discovered that the roots of the leguminous plants--that is,
clover, lupin, beans, peas, and so on--were usually covered with small
round swellings, or tumors, to which were given the name nodules. The
exact purpose of these swellings being unknown, they were set down as
a condition, possibly, of disease, and no further attention was paid to
them until Professor Hellriegel, of Burnburg, in Anhalt, Germany, took
up the work. After much experimenting, he made the important discovery
that lupins which had nodules would grow in soil devoid of nitrogen, and
that lupins which had no nodules would not grow in the same soil. It
was plain, therefore, that the nodules must play an important, though
mysterious, part in enabling the plant to utilise the free nitrogen of
the air. That was early in the '80s. His discovery at once started
other investigators to work, and it was not long before the announcement
came--and it came, curiously enough, at a time when Dr. Koch was making
his greatest contributions to the world's knowledge of the germ theory
of disease--that these nodules were the result of minute bacteria found
in the soil. Professor Beyerinck, of Münster, gave the bacteria the name
Radiocola.
It was at this time that Professor Nobbe took up the work with vigour.
If these nodules were produced by bacteria, he argued that the bacteria
must be present in the soil; and if they were not present, would it not
be possible to supply them by artificial means? In other words, if soil,
say worn-out farm-soil or, indeed, pure sand like that of the sea-shore
could thus be inoculated, as a physician inoculates a guinea-pig with
diphtheria germs, would not beans and peas planted there form nodules
and draw their nourishment from the air? It was a somewhat startling
idea, but all radically new ideas are startling; and, after thinking
it over, Professor Nobbe began, in 1888, a series of most remarkable
experiments, having as their purpose the discovery of a practical method
of soil inoculation. He gathered the nodule-covered roots of beans and
peas, dried and crushed them, and made an extract of them in water. Then
he prepared a gelatine solution with a little sugar, asparagine, and
other materials, and added the nodule-extract. In this medium colonies
of bacteria at once began to grow--bacteria of many kinds. Professor
Nobbe separated the Radiocola--which are oblong in shape--and made
what is known as a "clear culture," that is, a culture in gelatine,
consisting of billions of these particular germs, and no others. When
he had succeeded in producing these clear cultures he was ready for his
actual experiments in growing plants. He took a quantity of pure sand,
and, in order to be sure that it contained no nitrogen or bacteria in
any form, he heated it at a high temperature three different times for
six hours, thereby completely sterilising it. This sand he placed
in three jars. To each of these he added a small quantity of mineral
food--the required phosphorus, potassium, iron, sulphur, and so on.
To the first he supplied no nitrogen at all in any form; the second he
fertilised with saltpetre, which is largely composed of nitrogen in
a form in which plants may readily absorb it through their roots; the
third of the jars he inoculated with some of his bacteria culture. Then
he planted beans in all three jars, and awaited the results, as may
be imagined, somewhat anxiously. Perfectly pure sterilised water was
supplied to each jar in equal amounts and the seeds sprouted, and for
a week the young shoots in the three jars were almost identical in
appearance. But soon after that there was a gradual but striking change.
The beans in the first jar, having no nitrogen and no inoculation,
turned pale and refused to grow, finally dying down completely, starved
for want of nitrogenous food, exactly as a man would starve for the lack
of the same kind of nourishment. The beans in the second jar, with the
fertilised soil, grew about as they would in the garden, all of the
nourishment having been artificially supplied. But the third jar, which
had been jealously watched, showed really a miracle of growth. It
must be remembered that the soil in this jar was as absolutely free
of nitrogen as the soil in the first jar, and yet the beans flourished
greatly, and when some of the plants were analysed they were found to
be rich in nitrogen. Nodules had formed on the roots of the beans in
the third or inoculated jar only, thereby proving beyond the hope of the
experimenter that soil inoculation was a possibility, at least in the
laboratory.
With this favourable beginning Professor Nobbe went forward with his
experiments with renewed vigour. He tried inoculating the soil for peas,
clover, lupin, vetch, acacia, robinia, and so on, and in every case the
roots formed nodules, and although there was absolutely no nitrogen in
the soil, the plants invariably flourished. Then Professor Nobbe tried
great numbers of difficult test experiments, such as inoculating the
soil with clover bacteria and then planting it with beans or peas, or
vice versa, to see whether the bacteria from the nodules of any one
leguminous plant could be used for all or any of the others. He also
tried successive cultures; that is, bean bacteria for beans for several
years, to see if better results could be obtained by continued use. Even
an outline description of all the experiments which Professor Nobbe made
in the course of these investigations would fill a small volume, and it
will be best to set down here only his general conclusions.
[Illustration: Trees Growing in Water at Professor Nobbe's Laboratory.]
These wonderful nitrogen-absorbing bacteria do not appear in all soil,
although they are very widely distributed. So far as known they form
nodules only on the roots of a few species of plants. In their original
form in the soil they are neutral--that is, not especially adapted to
beans, or peas, or any one particular kind of crop. But if clover,
for instance, is planted, they straightway form nodules and become
especially adapted to the clover plant, so that, as every farmer knows,
the second crop of clover on worn-out land is much better than the
first. And, curiously enough, when once the bacteria have become
thoroughly adapted to one of the crops, say beans, they will not affect
peas or clover, or only feebly.
Another strange feature of the life of these little creatures, which has
a marvellous suggestion of intelligence, is their activities in various
kinds of soil. When the ground is very rich--that is, when it contains
plenty of nitrogenous matter--they are what Professor Nobbe calls
"lazy." They do not readily form nodules on the roots of the plants,
seeming almost to know that there is no necessity for it. But when once
the nitrogenous matter in the soil begins to fail, then they work more
sharply, and when it has gone altogether they are at the very height of
activity. Consequently, unless the soil is really worn out, or very
poor to begin with, there is no use in inoculating it--it would be like
"taking owls to Athens," as Professor Nobbe says.
[Illustration: Experimenting with Nitrogen in Professor Nobbe's
Laboratory.]
Having thus proved the remarkable efficacy of soil inoculation in his
laboratory and greenhouses, where I saw great numbers of experiments
still going forward, Professor Nobbe set himself to make his discoveries
of practical value. He gave to his bacteria cultures the name
"Nitragen"--spelled with an "a"--and he produced separate cultures for
each of the important crops--peas, beans, vetch, lupin, and clover. In
1894 the first of these were placed on the market, and they have had a
steadily increasing sale, although such a radical innovation as this,
so far out of the ordinary run of agricultural operation, and so almost
unbelievably wonderful, cannot be expected to spread very rapidly. The
cultures are now manufactured at one of the great commercial chemical
laboratories on the river Main. I saw some of them in Professor Nobbe's
laboratory. They come in small glass bottles, each marked with the name
of the crop for which it is especially adapted. The bottle is partly
filled with the yellow gelatinous substance in which the bacteria grow.
On the surface of this there is a mossy-like growth, resembling mould.
This consists of innumerable millions of the little oblong bacteria.
A bottle costs about fifty cents and contains enough bacteria for
inoculating half an acre of land. It must be used within a certain
number of weeks after it is obtained, while it is still fresh. The
method of applying it is very simple. The contents of the bottle are
diluted with warm water. Then the seeds of the beans, clover, or peas,
which have previously been mixed with a little soil, are treated with
this solution and thoroughly mixed with the soil. After that the mass is
partially dried so that the seeds may be readily sown. The bacteria at
once begin to propagate in the soil, which is their natural home, and by
the time the beans or peas have put out roots they are present in vast
numbers and ready to begin the active work of forming nodules. It is not
known exactly how the bacteria absorb the free nitrogen from the air,
but they do it successfully, and that is the main thing. Many German
farmers have tried Nitragen. One, who was sceptical of its virtues,
wrote to Professor Nobbe that he sowed the bacteria-inoculated seeds in
the form of a huge letter N in the midst of his field, planting the rest
in the ordinary way. Before a month had passed that N showed up green
and big over all the field, the plants composing it being so much larger
and healthier than those around it.
The United States Government has recently been experimenting along
the same lines and has produced a new form of dry preparation of the
bacteria in some cakes somewhat resembling a yeast-cake.
The possibilities of such a discovery as this seem almost limitless.
Science predicts the exhaustion of nitrogen and consequent failure of
the food supply, and science promptly finds a way of making plants draw
nitrogen from the boundless supplies of the air. The time may come when
every farmer will send for his bottles or cakes of bacteria culture
every spring as regularly as he sends for his seed, and when the work
of inoculating the soil will be a familiar agricultural process, with
discussions in the farmers' papers as to whether two bottles or one is
best for a field of sandy loam with a southern exposure. Stranger things
have happened. But it must be remembered, also, that the work is in
its infancy as yet, and that there are vast unexplored fields and
innumerable possibilities yet to fathom.
Wonderful as this discovery is, and much as it promises in the future,
its efficacy, as soon as it becomes generally known, is certain to be
overestimated, as all new discoveries are. Professor Nobbe himself says
that it has its own limited serviceability. It will produce a bounteous
crop of beans in the pure sand of the sea-shore if (and this is
an important if) that sand also contains enough of the mineral
substances--phosphorus, potassium, and so on--and if it is kept
properly watered. A man with a worn-out farm cannot go ahead blindly and
inoculate his soil and expect certain results. He must know the exact
disease from which his land is suffering before he applies the remedy.
If it is deficient in the phosphates, bacteria cultures will not help
it, whereas if it is deficient in nitrogen, bacteria are just what
it needs. And so agricultural education must go hand in hand with the
introduction of these future preservers of the human race. It is safe to
say that by the time there is a serious failure of the earth's soil
for lack of nitrogen, science, with this wonderful beginning, will have
ready a new system of cultivation, which will gradually, easily, and
perfectly take the place of the old.
Before leaving this wonderful subject of soil inoculation, a word
about Professor Nobbe himself will surely be of interest. I visited his
laboratory and saw his experiments.
Tharandt, in Saxony, where Professor Nobbe has carried on his
investigations for over thirty years, is a little village set
picturesquely among the Saxon hills, about half an hour's ride by
railroad from the city of Dresden. Here is located the Forest Academy
of the Kingdom, with which Professor Nobbe is prominently connected,
and here also is the agricultural experiment station of which he is
director. He has been for more than forty years the editor of one of the
most important scientific publications in Germany; he is chairman of the
Imperial Society of Agricultural Station Directors, and he has been the
recipient of many honours.
We now come to a consideration of the other method--the fixing of
nitrogen by machinery: a practical problem for the inventor.
Every one has noticed the peculiar fresh smell of the air which follows
a thunderstorm; the same pungent odour appears in the vicinity of a
frictional electric machine when in operation. This smell has been
attributed to ozone, but it is now thought that it may be due to oxides
of nitrogen; in other words, the electric discharges of lightning or
of the frictional machine have burned the air--that is, combined the
nitrogen and oxygen of the air, forming oxides of nitrogen.
[Illustration: Mr. Charles S. Bradley.]
[Illustration: Mr. D. R. Lovejoy.]
The fact that an electric spark will thus form an oxide of nitrogen has
long been known, but it remained for two American inventors, Mr. Charles
S. Bradley and Mr. D. R. Lovejoy, of Niagara Falls, N. Y., to work out a
way by inventive genius for applying this scientific fact to a practical
purpose, thereby originating a great new industry. I shall not attempt
here to describe the long process of experimentation which led up to the
success of their enterprise. Here was their raw material all around
them in the air; their problem was to produce a large number of very hot
electric flames in a confined space or box so that air could be passed
through, rapidly burned, and converted into oxides of nitrogen (nitric
oxides and peroxides), which could afterward be collected. They took the
power supplied by the great turbine wheels at Niagara Falls and produced
a current of 10,000 volts, a pressure far above anything ever used
before for practical purposes in this country. This was led into a box
or chamber of metal six feet high and three feet in diameter--the box
having openings to admit the air. By means of a revolving cylinder
the electric current is made to produce a rapid continuance of very
brilliant arcs, exactly like the glaring white arc of the arc-lamp, only
much more intense, a great deal hotter. The air driven in through
and around these hot arcs is at once burned, combining the oxygen and
nitrogen of which it is composed and producing the desired oxides of
nitrogen. These are led along to a chamber where they are combined with
water, producing nitric or nitrous acid; or if the gases are brought
into contact with caustic potash, saltpetre is the result; if
with caustic soda, nitrate of soda is the product--a very valuable
fertiliser. And the inventors have been able to produce these various
results at an expense so low that they can sell their output at a profit
in competition with nitrates from other sources, thus giving the world a
new source of fertiliser at a moderate price.
[Illustration: Eight-Inch 10,000-Volt Arcs Burning the Air for Fixing
Nitrogen.]
[Illustration: Machine for Burning the Air with Electric Arcs so as to
Produce Nitrates.]
In this way the power of Niagara has become a factor in the food
question, a defence against the ultimate hunger of the human race. And
when we think of the hundreds of other great waterfalls to be utilised,
and with our growing knowledge of electricity this utilisation will
become steadily cheaper, easier, it would seem that the inventor had
already found a way to help the farmer. Then there is the boundless
power of the tides going to waste, of the direct rays of the sun
utilised by some such sun motor as that described in another chapter
of this book, which in time may be called to operate upon the boundless
reservoir of nitrogen in the air for helping to produce the future food
for the human race.
[Illustration: MARCONI.
The Sending of an Epoch-Making Message.
_January 18, 1903, marks the beginning of a new era in telegraphic
communication. On that day there was sent by Marconi himself from the
wireless station at South Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass., to the station
at Poldhu, Cornwall, England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the
message--destined soon to be historic--from the President of the United
States to the King of England._]