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Show H IMPORTANT DISCOVERY H IS MADE. M From Salt Lake comes the an- B nouncement of the discovery of a new H method of chemically treating plant I H life which will Increase production H 1 from 25 to 100 per cent The formula, H which has been kept secret, has been I H offered to the United States govern- J H ment by P. J. O'Gara, chief in charge ' Hi ' of the agricultural investigations of i Hl the American Smelting and Refining j mWt company, who has been carrying on ' H! experiments for two years in Salt Lake 1 H valley. H If the discovery came from a source H less important, it might be accepted M as an immature scheme, worthy per- m haps of investigation, but not to be ; looked onas other than purely experimental. exper-imental. By the use of solutions of copper, lead, zinc and sulphur, all plant life j is greatly stimulated, according to Mr. i O'Gara. j In a statement to the Salt Lake Tribune, Mr. O'Gara is quoted as say Ing that for more than two years ho : has been engaged in experiments with j soils and that the added acre-j age which could be placed under un-der cultivation would greatly increase wheat production, He said that the conditions of the soil governed the use of the metals and their solutions, jin increasing productiveness. Each soil must be treated according to the mineral contents and it was but a mat ter of testing soils rather than experimenting ex-perimenting with the formulas at this time. He said that 15,000 acres of land in Davis county might be treated treat-ed shortly if the owner of the land followed out present intentions. "We experimented with copper on growing potato vines," said Mr. O'Gara. "The results showed that the potato yield in the field so treated was 35 per cent greater than the nor- ;mal yield. We treated other potato I n i i rmgsa i , vsbsz and grain fields with copper, lead, zinc and sulphur in different forms, according to the demands of the soil or tho plant, and tho result was that an increased production of from 25 to 10 per cent was had over the normal crops." The experiments have boon chemical chemi-cal in their nature and Mr. O'Gara said that to go into the details would involve the use of chemical phraseology phrase-ology not understood by the layman. Mr. O'Gara discovered a few months ago that alkali lands could bo made productive through the treating of the land with sulphuric acid and that draining of tho land was not necessary. |