NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 272, 21 November 1904, Page 2

NOTE AND COMMENT.

A great agricultural scie'ntMst has solved t lie problem of how WHAT to convert sterile soil iuto NEXT"? ground capable of producing abundant crops. lie has applied the principle of inoculation to Mother Earth, increased her productiveness in some cases by ten times, and made barren lands given witli produce. Tne story of this modern miracle is told Ifv Mr Gilbert Grosvejior in the October Century Magazine. The scientist is i>r. George T. Moore, of the United States Department of Agriculture, but the discovery itself is due to the famous German chemist, Professor Nob'bc. Most people know that one of the most important elements of the food of a plant is nitrogen, the supply of which in the earth has to he constantly renewed by means of manures and fertilisers. All the time that the-farmer is importing fertilisers from Chili and elsewhere at great cost, the very air that he breathes contains exhaustless stores of it. Seven-tenths of the atmosi phere are composed of free nitrogen. 1 The problem is how to capture it ! from the atmosphere and put it into I the ground. A liny germ does it. | Science having discovered that Ivans, peas, clover, and all similar plants obtain their nitrogen from the air and not from the soil, leaving in the soil, in fact, all the surplus they do not, want, Professor Nobbe analysed their roots, and found upon them little rounded bulbs packed full of bacteria. More minute examination showed that the function of these bacteria is to absorb the free nitrogen of the air, and convert it into food for the plant, Professor Nobbe isolated the bacteria, and succeeded in breeding and colonising the germs, but .when they were put into the earth they refused to act. ' J>& Moore came to the rescue, lie suspected a mistake in the cultivation of the germs. 'Professor Nobbu gave his germs too much nitrogen ; Dr. Moore made them forage for it themselves. The result was a permanent type of bacteria, with ten times the nitrogenhunting power of the original fe-erms. A small piece.of cotton will soak up millions of these bacteria, and if if is carefully dried the cotton can be sent to any part of the world, and the bacteria revived in wdfcr. Seeds are inoculated with these nitrogen bacteria by merely moistening them in the solution. Soil is inoculated in the same way, and then mixed with four or five times its bulk, and spread lightly over the land. The inoculation can be performed Ityy any farmer without scientific knowledge, llere are some typical results of inoculation by an unscientific agriculturist Cotton, a gain of 40 per cent. ; whoat, a gain of 46 percent.; potatoes, a gain of 50 per cent. ; oats, a gain of 800 per cent. ; rye, a gain of 400 per cent. The cost per acre is a halfpenny.

Palurmo is a'ble t.o bpaet an unusually successful instance MUNICIPAL of municipal trading. BREAD. Onc-sixih of the bread consumed is made by the city in a bakery of its own. Jt hail its origin in l an attempt by the city authorities to break down a monopoly in the flour trade. Thef collected grain from all parts of .Scicily, and vanquished the hostility of those interested by setting up a municipal flourmill and bakery. In this way it. was demonstrated that the standard prices fixed for flour and breadstuffs wore not unfair to private enterprise, although the price of broad fell about a halfpenny a pound. The circumstances of the case, it will be seen, are peculiar, and it is important to observe that the municipal Imkerv is very far from Jmving replaced one bakery by another, ily producing only a portion of ihe bread consumed l , competition is not destroyed, but merely regulated. The private bakers are a check upon any tendency towards municipal extravagance or mefliciency, while they are in turn influenced by their municipal rival and by one another. There are many dilliculties to overcome at the outset, owing to the lack of adequate preliminary organisation, and v for )x triune ihe police were actually impressed into the task of retailing, the bread in huts in the principal streets. That stage, however, has been successfully passed, and the undertaking has now become one of the permanent'institutions of the city,