Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/441

Rh Dr. H. W. Wiley, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, has pointed out the surprisingly large amount of potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen which is yearly taken up by the agricultural crops alone. The average percentage of ash in all the important crops has been accurately determined and their percentage composition in respect to potash and phosphoric acid is known. In addition to this we have a satisfactory knowledge of the percentage of albuminous matter contained in the more important agricultural products. From these figures and the reports of the U. S. Department of Agriculture we can calculate the amount of potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen consumed each year. Allowing a value of four cents a pound for potash, five cents for phosphoric acid and twelve cents for nitrogen, the total value of these ingredients for a single year amounts to the enormous sum of $3,200,000,000. To be sure, this is not all removed from the farm and lost to the soil; but that which remains in the form of straw and manure is but a small percentage of the whole. Straw is generally burned, while the soluble salts of the manure heaps are often allowed to leach out and go to waste. When, in addition, we consider the terrible waste involved in the modern methods of sewage disposal, where, instead of being returned to the soil, these valuable constituents are carried to the ocean, the net loss of these chemicals can be easily appreciated.

Of these three most important ingredients making up a fertilizer for general purposes, phosphoric acid alone seems to be at hand in practically inexhaustible quantities. Slag rich in phosphoric acid from certain metallurgical processes is already much used as a source of this material. Fresh deposits of phosphate rock of such enormous extent are being brought to light almost every day that our supply of this material may give us little immediate concern.

Although the Strassfurt region of Germany may continue to ship undiminished quantities of potash salts, the second important ingredient of a fertilizer, the world's supply can not be said to be on a perfectly satisfactory basis until independent sources are developed. In the year 1902 the value of the potash salts imported into the United States amounted to four and a half million dollars. The recovery of potash from wood ashes, while once an important industry, must diminish as the value of hard wood increases. While there are doubtless natural beds of potassium salt still to be discovered, the time seems rapidly approaching when we should render more readily available the great amount of potassium distributed throughout the mineral kingdom. Rhodin had already accomplished much towards this end when he showed that feldspar could be made to yield the greater part of its potash when it was heated with lime and common salt. Clark has found that when the mineral leucite with its 21 per cent, potassium