It has received its greatest impetus in America, under the experiments of Professor Moore of the United States Agricultural Department.
The Department supplied free to farmers the bacteria for inoculation. Now they supply it only for experimental purposes. A laboratory has been fitted up for the work. The method is to propagate bacteria for each of the various leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, soy beans, cow peas, tares, and velvet beans. All of these plants are of incalculable value in different sections of the country as forage for farm animals. In the West, alfalfa is the main reliance for stockraisers. The farmers of the East are trying to establish it, but meet with difficulty chiefly for want of the special bacteria which should be found on the roots.
The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers. With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive the greater part of its food from the air.
Here is one of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported by the United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 214.
G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn, Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfertilized strips, and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of any kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate) at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre."
This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already has enough nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent.
The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the human race has a great love for "inoculation," and indeed for all unnatural processes.
You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chandler Harris tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared. One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the tree and the dogs ran in—the coon wasn't there.
"Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said you saw the coon there."
"So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it."