"Water is composed of the two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are gases in the free state. Water is taken into the plant through the roots and decomposed in the leaves in contact with the carbon dioxid under the influence of sunlight and the life principle. The oxygen from the water and part of that from the carbon dioxid is given off into the air through the breathing pores, while the carbon, hydrogen, and part of the oxygen, unite to form the carbohydrates. These three elements constitute about ninety-five per cent. of our farm crops, and yet every one of the other seven plant food elements is just as essential to the growth and full development of the plant as are these three."
"Then so long as we have air above and moisture below, our crops will not lack for carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Is that the summing up of the matter?"
"Yes, Sir," Percy replied.
"And those three elements make up ninety-five per cent. of our farm crops. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Sir, as an average."
"Well, now it seems to me, if nature thus provides ninety-five per cent. of all we need, we ought to find some way of furnishing the other five per cent. It makes me think of the young wife who told her husband she could live on bread and water, with his love, and he told her that if she would furnish the bread he'd skirmish around and get the water. But, say, did that South Carolina man use any fertilizer for that immense crop of corn?"
"Some fertilizer, yes. He applied manure and fertilizer from February till June. In all he applied 1000 bushels (about 30 tons) of farm manure, 600 bushels of whole cotton seed, 900 pounds of cotton seed meal, 900 pounds of kainit, 1100 pounds of guano, 200 pounds of bone meal, 200 pounds of acid phosphate, and 400 pounds of sodium nitrate."
"I would also like to know the facts about this nitrogen business," said Mr. Thornton. "I've understood that one could get some of it from the air, and I would much rather get it that way than to buy it from the fertilizer agent at twenty cents a pound. Cowpeas don't seem to help much, and we don't have the cotton seed, and we never have sufficient manure to cover much land."
"It is a remarkable fact," said Percy, "that of the ten essential elements of plant food, nitrogen is the most abundant, measured by crop requirements, and at the same time the most expensive. The air above an acre of land contains enough carbon for a hundred bushels of corn per acre for two years, and enough nitrogen for five hundred thousand years; and yet the nitrogen in commercial fertilizers costs from fifteen to twenty cents a pound. At commercial prices for nitrogen, every man who owns an acre of land is a millionaire.
"You mean he has millions in the air," amended Mr. Thornton.