showing us a supply of cheap potash we will erect him a monument as big
as Washington's. But Ostwald is wrong in supposing that America is as
dependent as Germany upon potash. The bulk of our food crops are at
present raised without the use of any fertilizers whatever.

As the cession of Lorraine in 1871 gave Germany the phosphates she
needed for fertilizers so the retrocession of Alsace in 1919 gives
France the potash she needed for fertilizers. Ten years before the war a
bed of potash was discovered in the Forest of Monnebruck, near
Hartmannsweilerkopf, the peak for which French and Germans contested so
fiercely and so long. The layer of potassium salts is 16-1/2 feet thick
and the total deposit is estimated to be 275,000,000 tons of potash. At
any rate it is a formidable rival of Stassfurt and its acquisition by
France breaks the German monopoly.

When we turn to the consideration of the third plant food we feel
better. While the United States has no such monopoly of phosphates as
Germany had of potash and Chile had of nitrates we have an abundance and
to spare. Whereas we formerly _imported_ about $17,000,000 worth of
potash from Germany and $20,000,000 worth of nitrates from Chile a year
we _exported_ $7,000,000 worth of phosphates.

Whoever it was who first noticed that the grass grew thicker around a
buried bone he lived so long ago that we cannot do honor to his powers
of observation, but ever since then--whenever it was--old bones have
been used as a fertilizer. But we long ago used up all the buffalo bones
we could find on the prairies and our packing houses could not give us
enough bone-meal to go around, so we have had to draw upon the old
bone-yards of prehistoric animals. Deposits of lime phosphate of such
origin were found in South Carolina in 1870 and in Florida in 1888.