y the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers.
With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive the
greater part of its food from the air.

Here is one of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported
by the United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 214.

G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn,
Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfertilized strips,
and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of
any kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate)
at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre."

This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that
nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already has enough
nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent.

The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve
of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the human
race has a great love for "inoculation," and indeed for all
unnatural processes.

You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chandler Harris
tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but
always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared.
One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon
was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they
got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough
they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a
bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the
tree and the dogs ran in--the coon wasn't there.

"Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said
you saw the coon there."

"So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very
easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it."

Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves
notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like,
and their utilization can come about only through irrigation.

This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and
the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the
sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will
transform it into beautiful gardens and farms.

With the work being done by the United States Government, and that
of the various states, we may look forward in the not distant future
to this land being made habitable to man.

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