Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/347

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BACTERIA IN AGRICULTURE.
343

morphic and readily undergo marked morphological changes in different culture media and under varying environmental conditions.

3. The species or variety of rhizobium living in natural symbiotic or biologic relationship with one given species of leguminous plant may be so modified artificially as to induce it to live in a similar relationship with a different species of leguminous plant, indicating great biologic adaptability.

4. It is probable that rhizobia of various leguminous plants may be so modified by special culture methods as to induce them to develop in or upon the roots of non-leguminous plants, continuing their free nitrogen-assimilating function, thus supplying such plants with nitrogenous compounds which serve as soil fertilizer or food for the plants with which the modified rhizobia will form a temporary intimate relationship.

5. The bacillus of Caron (Bacillus Ellenhachiensis) also gives promise of great utility in future economic agriculture, especially in the cultivation of gramineous plants.