The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CHAPTER XIX CHEMISTRY AND AGRICULTURE IT is becoming more and more obvious as time goes on that there is scarcely any department of Nature’s activity, scarcely any useful art practised by man, in which the laws and principles of chemistry are not involved. In the delicate processes which go on in our bodies, in the roaring of the blast furnace, in the silent growth of the tiniest blade of grass, chemical forces are at work, merely on atoms and molecules, and yet producing changes which in their sum total can be described only as mighty and marvellous. The activity of these forces has often remained unsuspected for long ages, and man’s skill in many useful arts has been acquired, not from any scientific knowledge of the underlying principles, but by long experience and practice. Agriculture is a case in point. Since Adam delved, the art of tilling the soil has been a common occupation, and a vast store of practical knowledge of agriculture has been gradually accumulated. In these days of competition, however, rule-of-thumb methods, handed down from father to son, are not sufficient to command success, and the aid of the chemist has to be invoked. We can well imagine how ancient and hoary Agriculture might resent the in- trusion into its domain of the modern upstart Chemistry. As if it had any right to teach Agriculture why and how it ought to do this and that! This struggle between the 215