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Show fe;,f M T 7B O make the wind that -'r from Eden time blow- tW-i ' eth where It listeth -'C. carry man on frail new I Yy, found wings Bavors of yvr-. :" 7 the sublime, f- ? V- But it also savors of i the supremely natural. for have not the years looked forward to it as a foregone conclusion? Not because it was imperative, im-perative, like those problems that the race must solve for its very existence, ex-istence, but merely for the reason that man in his god-like vanity must perforce reach the very limit, if limit there be, of his possibilities. So men have learned to make wings that adapt themselves In a measure to the air, arid when the untamable winds are complaisant they make their little .flights and say, "We have .conquered the sky. Behold the 6iiblime! the work of men." And the name of each aerial adventurer is known and lauded and passed from tongue to tongue. To take that same free eternal air and rend it aa we rend the earth to make metals, to make of it helpless material in men's hands, answering with indifference its raging and blustering, blus-tering, and to do not only that, but to make it answer the most unanswerable unanswer-able riddle ever propounded by mother earth this is the work of one woman. And it is a thousand to one you have never even heard her name. No, not strange, but only the world's way. For one achievement is as romantic ro-mantic and gratuitous as a tourney of knights in glittering armor. But the other is as humble as the baking of a loaf in the ashes. So that I hesitate to turn from the grandeur of flying through the air to the making of fertilizer fer-tilizer from that air, lest I be accused of willfully plunging from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is not only impossible, being an accomplished fact, bat it is of an aspect as-pect yet more sublime than aviation. Never heard of making fertilizer out of the air? There is a factory now doing it in this country and another an-other is being built, there are seven or eight in Norway, and Sweden, Austria, Aus-tria, Germany and France have them also. Fertilizer Is absolutely essential to your life, because there is not so very much virgin soil left on the earth, and much of what there Is is uncul-tivable. uncul-tivable. And in spite of the rotating of crops earth is becoming weary with the Immense strain of feeding her teeming millions. In the childhood of the race she fed us freely, as a mother moth-er should her babes. But as the race grew up things have changed, and earth long since became like a bank into which we must first put something some-thing if we would get anything out. The next age will behold a still more stringent state of affairs, for earth will be seen to be holding over man's head a mortgage, with the threat of immediate forclosure If the giant interest in-terest accruing be not met. Even now things have reached a state where practically every acre of land under cultivation is first fertilized. The end of the natural fertilizer is in sight, which means that Mother Earth Bus at last seen through our trick of paying our board bill with something taken from herself, and Is putting a lock on the pantry door. What next? We must pay her or starve, and pay her in advance In the shape of so much fertilizer for so much food. So the mad question becomes, be-comes, "How shall we pay without coin? Earth ia our only supply of that, even as she Is our only supply of food. And now she is withdrawing the coin." Could a more Impossible deadlock be imagined? And doesn't the deadlock become a thing to amaze the stars when we consider that one of the most needed elements of a "complete fertilizer" fertil-izer" exists right In the air that all plants grow up in and breathe and stretch out their arms in, but that through all the aeons that have passed since "God said, let the earth bring forth." they have been separated by a gulf from that food that they live In and for lack of which earth saya she will one day extinguish them and through them ua. ' That ia not to say that plants do not absorb nitrogen ni-trogen from the atmosphere. But plants obtain but a part of the needed nitrates that way. The rest must, by an edict of nature, come by way of their roots from the soil where earth Is withdrawing with-drawing the supply, sup-ply, instead of by way of leaf and branch from the air, where the supply is ex-haustless. ex-haustless. Doesn't that look as if It were true that earth were conspiring against her children? That is just what It has been looking like to those seer eyed scientists who are able to peer into the future and see the end of those supplies that seem so boundless to the lay mind. But even to them the question has only recently become acute, and they have been asking each other how this great sphinx riddle could be answered. answer-ed. But where was ever the woman who could forever remain a closed book to other women? The riddle has been answered, and answered by a woman. If earth demands fertilization and is withdrawing her own natural supplies of the coin she demands, what then? "Simple," said Mme. Lefebre of Paris. "There's only one thing besides the earth available, and that Is the air. Use it." And then she devis&d the method of extracting the nitrogen from the air and using It to make nitric ni-tric acid, and In turn the multitudinous multitudin-ous chemical's that man now needs, including the humble and all important import-ant fertilizer. "When did she do it?" asks the public. pub-lic. "It must be very recent, or the news would have traveled outside of scientific circles. When it does, the woman will be lauded as she deserves." de-serves." The woman will not be lauded. She made her discovery more than half a century ago, taking out an English patent on the process in the year 1859, . and the decades that intervened between be-tween the time of her work and mankind's man-kind's discovery of its necessity have been sufficient to bury her name as completely as they hid her deed till urgent necessity made us aware of it. Look through the articles on famous women scientists In the old French reviews; re-views; look through French dictionaries diction-aries of science and histories of important im-portant inventions. You'll find the names of those who met a then" recognized rec-ognized need, but you will probably find no mention of her, though the value of her discovery may exceed theirs many times. And listen to this, published not long ago in one of the chemical trade journals: "Nitrogen .... is so rare an article, the commercial com-mercial sources of it being so few, that he who will discover a cheap commercial com-mercial process for obtaining it from the atmosphere and combining it in a form that will be serviceable in crop production not only will be a great benefactor and inventor, but will change the economy of living on this earth." "He who will discover!" "She" had already discovered, and had done it before be-fore the need became pressing, just as a mother feeds her family so long before be-fore hunger becomes acute that they are not aware that her simple act sustains sus-tains and saves their very lives. Had Mme. Lefebre made her discovery 50 years after she did this is what the chemist would have said: "Nitrogen ... Is so rare an article . . . that she who discovered a process for obtaining obtain-ing it from the atmosphere . . . not only is a great benefactor and inventor, inven-tor, but has changed the economy of living on this earth." Then he might have added: "And the modern need being everlastingly for the greater cheapening of processes, and the cost of water power, high or low, the one who will make the latter still cheaper or invent a substitute independent of the natural supply of water power, will make her blessing to mankind practically practic-ally free." What is this process that produces such marvelous results? It is as elemental ele-mental in Its simplicity as the great primal drama I spoke of In beginning to tell this story. It is In this that fire and water are called in to aid the woman. Fire? The leading feature of the process is an electric arc between be-tween the poles of which the temperature tempera-ture is 4,200 degrees centigrade, or 7.51)2 degrees Fahrenheit. It reminds us of that "fervent heat" In which "the earth also shall melt," and when air is passed over that arc one naturally natur-ally expects a result apocalyptic in its nature. What does happen is that the oxygen in tho Rir Is burnt up. utterlv consumed. That which remains is. a colorless gas. aa invisible as the air itself, which is known as nitric oxide i This, driven out into the air. recoin-I recoin-I bines with It, the result being, of course, twice as much nitrogen as there was before to the same amount of ox;. gen; in other words, nitrogen dioxide (N02). The next step is just as childishly simple. There la added one more ingredient, no rare and mystic compound to transform the air by magic Into chemicals before our eyes just water. The result of this Is nitric acid, poisonous and powerful, made of air plus a part of the air plua water! And this chemical stands second In commercial Importance, only one, sulphuric acid, having a vaster area of usefulness. But nitric acid, you say, is not fertilizer. fer-tilizer. It practically Is in the chemist's chem-ist's mind, for with it he is as near to having fertilizer as he Is to having money when he pushes an indorsed check through the paying teller's window. win-dow. Limestone is cheap, exhaust-less, exhaust-less, easy to get and easy to work. He treats it with his air made nitric acid, and the result ia nitrate of lime (or nitrate of calcium), for fertilizing purposes the practical equivalent of the' famous Chilian nitrate of soda. That Is about all of the process, but, simple aa It is, It Is spectacular enough to fulfill all expectations. For the electric spark between the poles of that arc -, nine feet long. Nine feet of that Inconceivable fervor of heat! a nine foot core of. light so intense in-tense aa to be colorless, a thing al- I most beyond the concept of both eye and imagination. Surrounding this ia a zone of wonderful greenish blue, fascinating and repelling at the same time, like an evil beauty. Here the temperature is 1,400 degrees centigrade, centi-grade, or 2,552 degrees Fahrenheit. Wrapped about this fthe beauty's veil, to make more alluring by partial concealment) con-cealment) ia a zone of paie greenish brown, and here the temperature la but a paltry 900 or 1,000 centigrade. It is mystical, terrible, and to behold as its result that humble, whitish, crumbly crum-bly stuff that is only fertilizer dust, and to return to dust, ia as if we were to behold witches casting, with spells and mutterings, all sorts of magic into their cauldron to take therefrom a loaf of bread. That is just what is it. though bread for us and the generations to come. For, in spite of the fact that water power costs four times as much in this country aa It doea in Norway and twice aa much aa in Austria or Switzerland, Its development has already al-ready so cheapened the use of electricity elec-tricity that the production of atmospheric atmos-pheric nitrogen ia at'last coming into its own as a thing of such limitless commercial value that Its discoverer indeed deserves the name of "a great benefactor," for she has, in truth, accomplished ac-complished that which will "change the economy of living on thia earth." |