Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/298

294 clothing, the means of combating disease, the means of transportation, the means of producing heat and a great variety of things that contribute to his bodily comfort and gratify his esthetic desires. It is not my purpose to attempt to deal with all of these and to show how science is helping to work out the problems suggested. I shall have to content myself by pointing out a few of the more important problems the solution of which depends upon the prosecution of scientific research.

First, the food problem. Whatever views one may hold in regard to that which has come to be called 'race suicide,' it appears that the population of the world is increasing rapidly. The desirable places have been occupied. In some parts of the earth there is such a surplus of population that famines occur from time to time, and in other parts epidemics and floods relieve the embarrassment. We may fairly look forward to the time when the whole earth will be overpopulated unless the production of food becomes more scientific than it now is. Here is the field for the work of the agricultural chemist who is showing us how to increase the yield from a given area, and, in case of poor and worn-out soils, how to preserve and increase their fertility. It appears that the methods of cultivating the soil are still comparatively crude, and more and more thorough investigation of the processes involved in the growth of plants is called for. Much has been learned since Liebig founded the science of agricultural chemistry. It was he who pointed out some of the ways by which it is possible to increase the fertility of a soil. Since the results of his investigations were given to the world the use of artificial fertilizers has become more and more general.

But it is one thing to know that artificial fertilizers are useful and it is quite another thing to get them. At first bone dust and guano were chiefly used. Then as these became dearer, phosphates and potassium salts from the mineral kingdom came into use.

At the Fifth International Congress for Applied Chemistry, held at Berlin, Germany, last June, Dr. Adolph Frank, of Charlottenburg, gave an extremely interesting address on the subject of the use of the nitrogen of the atmosphere for agriculture and the industries, which bears upon the problem that we are dealing with. Plants must have nitrogen. At present this is obtained from the great beds of saltpeter found on the west coast of South America—the so-called Chili saltpeter—and also from the ammonia obtained as a by-product in the distillation of coal, especially in the manufacture of coke. The use of Chili saltpeter for agricultural purposes began about 1860. In 1900 the quantity exported was 1,453,000 tons, and its value was about $60,000,000. In the same year the world's production of ammonium sulphate was about 500,000 tons, of a value of somewhat more than $20,000,000. Of these enormous quantities about three quarters finds