All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

268 All About Inventions was exhausted hundreds of years ago. The farmer is compelled to stimulate his soil, to inject nitrogen in large quantities, as it were, in order to earn suf- ficient to profit from the sweat of his brow. If he did not embrace the results of science his land would bring him ruin, and that within a very short period. But science is not content with restoring the soil to its approximate virgin richness. It discovered that, if the latter were stimulated, the yield per acre might be increased two- and threefold. Con- sequently it enriches the worked soil to an excessive degree with the express purpose of securing the very highest yield per acre which can be attained. The farmer in the new countries will not appreciate the work of science. It represents a certain expense which, in the blindness of his conceit, he refuses to incur, ignoring the fact that by the expenditure of a penny he may get back a shilling or more. Wheat may be described as the glutton of the vegetable world for nitrogen. But the nitrogen must be served in a special manner—in the form of nitrates, nitrites, or ammonia. While all forms are employed, it is the first-named, as nitrate of soda, which con- stitutes the staple fertiliser. Upon the lofty flanks of the Andes and among the shore hills of Chile large beds of this nourishing agent exist, and Chile has become the universal provider in this commodity. It is only within the past few years, comparatively speaking, that the value of these deposits of salt- petre, to quote the familiar description of the mineral, has become recognised. In 1830 nothing was known about Chilian nitrate, and even in 1850 the quantity exported to different parts of the world was so small