"That is surely quick work," said Percy, "but I wonder if the corn
plant might not get somewhat different results from the soil
analysis which it makes."

"How do you mean?"

"Did you ever plant a field of corn and then cultivate it and watch
it grow with increasing rapidity, until along about the Fourth of
July every leaf seemed to nod its appreciation and thanks as you
stirred the soil; and to show its gratitude, too, by growing about
five inches every twenty-four hours when the nights were warm?"

"No," replied the Chemist, "I have never had any experience of that
sort. I am devoting my life to the more scientific investigations
relating to the fundamental laws which underlie these soil fertility
problems."

"Well, I was only thinking," Percy continued, "that you analyze a
fraction of a pound of soil in a few minutes, while the corn plant
analyzes about a ton of soil by a sort of continuous process, which
covers twenty-four hours every day for about one hundred and twenty
days, and it takes into account every change in temperature and
moisture, the aeration with any variation produced by cultivation,
and also the changes brought about by the nitrifying bacteria and
all other agencies that promote the decomposition of the soil and
the liberation of plant food, including the action upon the
insoluble phosphates and other minerals of the carbonic acid exhaled
by the roots of the corn plants, the nitric acid produced by the
process of nitrification, and the various acids resulting from the