Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1916 — DOUBLE POWER OF NITROGEN [ARTICLE]

DOUBLE POWER OF NITROGEN

Has the Ability to Destroy or Sustain Life, According.to How It Is Employed. Nitrogen’s power depends in the first place on the fact thnt it carries in oxygen to compounds which are thus rendered explosive, turning all the elements into a huge volume of gas, itself being set free. The very inertness of nitrogen or its objection to affinity means that on the least provocation it will easily release Its partner, oxygen, handing this over to the combustion of otiier elements present, with the formation of Volumes of gases, the nitrogen returning to what is apparently its congenial condition,. the free state. ..... ■ . As a fertilizer in the soil nitrogen acts as a stimulant and supplies the necessary nitrogen to the plant. In other words, it is a plant food. Thus the remarkable thing about nitrogen above all other elements Is its power to destroy life or to sustain it, according to the associates with which it is in company. With certain accomplices it forms death-dealing explosives, with others it becomes a null ritive material. It is the essentially romantic element,- devil or god, according to Its associations.