Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/385

Rh and a working proportion of carbonate of lime. Now, as we know, all virgin soils are not rich, and only in a few parts of the world are to be found those wonderful black soils that are often several feet in depth and contain 10 to 20 per cent, of organic matter and 3 to 5 parts per thousand of nitrogen. These soils are all calcareous, they occur in regions of a moderate rainfall inducing grass-steppe or bush conditions, and the annual fall of vegetation provides the organic matter which the Azotobacter requires as a source of energy in order to fix nitrogen. Non-calcareous soils under similar climatic conditions do not accumulate nitrogen and become rich; in the absence of carbonate of lime the nitrogen-fixing organisms are not active, and the soil only receives from the annual fall of vegetation the nitrogen that was originally taken from it. There is but a cyclic movement of nitrogen from the soil to the plant and back again, whereas in the calcareous soils there is also continuous addition of fresh nitrogen derived from the atmosphere, in which process the carbonaceous part of the annual crop supplies the motive power.

The other leading case to be found at Rothamsted is that of certain grassplots which have artificially been brought into an acid condition by the continued application of sulphate of ammonia. In these soils nitrification is suspended, the nitrification organisms have even disappeared, though the herbage still obtains nitrogen because most plants are able to utilize ammoniacal nitrogen as well as nitrates. The interesting feature, however, is that the decaying grass on these acid soils passes into the form of peat, a layer of which is forming upon the surface of the soil, though nothing of the kind is found on adjacent plots where the use of lime or of alkaline manures has prevented the development of acidity. From this we may learn that the development of a surface layer of peat, independent of waterlogging (when another kind of peat forms even under alkaline conditions), is determined by the acidity of the soil, when certain of the bacterial processes of decay are replaced by changes due by micro-fungi which do not carry the breaking-down of organic matter to the destructive stage. This affords us a clue to the origin of many areas of upland peat in the British Isles, where the remains of ancient forest roots and stumps of trees are found on the true soil surface below the layer of peat, but where there is no water-logging to bring about the death of the trees and the formation of peat. We may suppose that when the land-surface became fit for vegetation at the close of the glacial epoch it covered itself with a normal vegetation, chiefly dwarf forest, because of the rainfall and temperature. The soil, however, being without carbonate of lime, would in time become acid with the products of decay of the vegetable matter falling to the ground, and as soon as this acid condition was set up peat would begin to form from the grassy surface vegetation. The process would