Manures and the principles of manuring

by Charles Morton Aikman

Absence of strong Sunlight.

It has been found that the process goes on much more actively in darkness; indeed Warington has found in his experiments that nitrification could be arrested by simply exposing the vessel in which it was going on to the action of sunshine.

Nitrifying Organisms destroyed by Poisons.

It has already been pointed out that nitrification is arrested by the action of antiseptics, such as chloroform, bisulphide of carbon, and carbolic acid. Another substance which has been found to have an injurious action is ferrous sulphate or "copperas," a substance which is apt to be present in badly drained soils, or soils in which there is much actively putrefying organic matter. Maercker has found that in moor soils containing ferrous sulphate, no nitrates, or mere traces of nitrates, could be found. A substance such as gas-lime, unless submitted to the action of the atmosphere for some time, would also have a bad effect in checking nitrification, owing to the poisonous sulphur compounds it contains. Common salt, it would seem, also arrests the process; and this antiseptic property which salt exercises on nitrification throws a certain amount of light on the nature of its action when applied, as it is often done, along with artificial nitrogenous manures.

Denitrification.

In connection with the process of nitrification, it is of interest to notice that a process of an opposite nature may also take place in soils—viz., denitrification—a process which consists in reducing the nitrates to nitrites, nitrous oxide, or free nitrogen. That a reduction of nitrates takes place in the decomposition of sewage with the evolution of free nitrogen, was a fact first observed by the late Dr Angus Smith in 1867; and the reduction of nitrates to nitrites, and nitric and nitrous oxides in putrefactive changes has been subsequently noticed by different experimenters, who have further observed that such reduction takes place in the case of putrefaction going on in the presence of large quantities of water or where there is much organic matter.

Denitrification also effected by Bacteria.

This change was supposed to be of a purely chemical nature, and it has only been recently discovered that it is effected, like nitrification, by means of bacteria. It has been surmised by some that the action of denitrification may be effected by the same organisms that effect nitrification, and that it depends on merely external conditions which process goes on. There is no reason, however, to suppose that this is so, and several of the denitrifying organisms have been identified.

Conditions favourable for Denitrification.

That it is a process that goes on to any extent in properly cultivated soils is not to be supposed. The conditions which favour denitrification are exactly the opposite of those which favour nitrification. It is only when oxygen is excluded, or, which practically means the same thing, when large quantities of organic matter are in active putrefaction, and the supply of oxygen is therefore deficient, that denitrification takes place. Schloesing, as we have already seen, found that in the case of a moist soil, kept in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen, a reduction of its nitrates to free nitrogen took place.