Note 15 — Chapter V · NITROGEN AND AIR

Berthelot successfully employed electricity of even feeble potential in these experiments, which fact led him to think that in nature, where the action of electricity takes place very frequently, a part of the complex nitrogenous substances may proceed from the gaseous nitrogen of the air by this method.

As the nitrogenous substances of organisms play a very important part in them (organic life cannot exist without them), and as the nitrogenous substances introduced into the soil are capable of invigorating its crops (of course in the presence of the other nourishing principles required by plants), the question of the means of converting the atmospheric nitrogen into the nitrogenous compounds of the soil, or into assimilable nitrogen capable of being absorbed by plants and of forming complex (albuminous) substances in them, is one of great theoretical and practical interest. The artificial (technical) conversion of the atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogenous compounds, notwithstanding repeated attempts, cannot yet be considered as fulfilled in a practical remunerative manner although its possibility is already evident. Electricity will probably aid in solving this very important practical problem. When the theoretical side of the question is further advanced, then without doubt an advantageous means will be found for the manufacture of nitrogenous substances from the nitrogen of the air; and this is needed, before all, for the agriculturist, to whom nitrogenous fertilisers form an expensive item, and are more important than all other manures.

One thousand tons of farmyard manure do not generally contain more than four tons of nitrogen in the form of complex nitrogenous substances, and this amount of nitrogen is contained in twenty tons of ammonium sulphate, therefore the effect of a mass of farmyard manure in respect to the introduction of nitrogen may be produced by small quantities of artificial nitrogenous fertilisers (see Note 15 bis).