Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/242

238 Before discussing the present and prospective sources of supply of useful compounds of this element, it should be mentioned that, though the consumption of these compounds in fertilizers exceeds all other uses of them, yet enormous quantities are required in other industries. Thus, the powerful modern explosives which have made practicable great engineering works, like the Panama Canal and the Hudson River tunnels, are all nitrogen compounds—made by the action of nitric acid on glycerin, cotton, or some other material. Most of the so-called coal-tar products, the artificial dyestuffs, drugs and perfumes, are also prepared from the substances distilled out of the tar by first treating these substances with nitric acid. Ammonia, too, a compound of nitrogen with hydrogen, is used in large quantity in refrigerating plants and in various chemical industries.

Up to a few years ago, there were only two important commercial sources of nitrogen-compounds—the great natural deposits of sodium nitrate (the so-called Chili saltpeter) in Chili, Peru and Bolivia; and the crude ammonium sulfate obtained in the manufacture of gas and coke from coal. But the saltpeter deposits will, at the present rate of exploitation, become exhausted within a period variously estimated at from 30 to 100 years; and, in the meantime, owing to increased cost of production, the price of the saltpeter is steadily rising, thus restricting its availability as a fertilizer. The ammonia produced in gas and coke works is only a by-product; and the quantity of it can not of course be increased beyond that corresponding to the demand for the main products, gas and coke. The total quantity of ammonia thus produced is in fact entirely insufficient to furnish the nitrogen used in fertilizers; and by far the larger proportion of commercial nitrogen is still derived from the saltpeter deposits of South America.

The nitrogen from these sources costs to-day in American or European markets not far from 15 cents a pound—a price which is causing a nitrogen famine among the crops of the world; for the cost is too high to admit of spreading it in adequate quantity over the millions of acres of land under cultivation. This condition of things offers a challenge to the scientific investigator. For, though nitrogen is one of the commonest elements, forming as it does, four fifths of our atmosphere, yet we are drawing nearly all our nitrogen from South American mines or from gas works and are paying fifteen cents a pound to get it in a form available for plant life.

It might seem as if the problem of converting the nitrogen of the air into compounds that can be assimilated by plants was essentially a chemical one; but recent discoveries have opened also to the biologist a great field of investigation in this direction. For it has been found that, although the higher plants can not utilize directly the nitrogen of the atmosphere, there are certain common kinds of bacteria, which