Excerpt from Occasional Lectures and Other Discourses on Agricultural Chemistry

M. Boussingault's soils consisted of burnt soil, washed and ignited pumice, or burnt brick his experiments were sometimes in free air, sometimes in a closed vessel with limited air, sometimes with a current of washed air, and sometimes in free air, but under a glass case. When the plants were enclosed, a supply of carbonic acid was provided, and in a few cases known quantities of nitre were supplied as manure.

The last two columns of the Table (vi.) show the actual and pro portional gain of nitrogen in M. Boussingault's experiments. It will be observed that in his earliest experiments, those in free air, in a summer house, the leguminous plants, trefoil and peas, did indicate a notable gain of nitrogen but in all his subsequent experiments there was generally either a slight loss, or, if a gain, it was represented in only fractions, or low units, of milligrams. After twenty years of varied and laborious investigation of the subject, M. Boussingault concluded that plants have not the power of taking up and assimi lating the free nitrogen of the atmosphere.

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