This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V27", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
Mr. Darwin's careful experiments on the so-called carnivorous plants, to our mind conclusively overturned the conclusions of Boussingault, Lawes, Gilbert, Pugh and others, that plants do not obtain any nitrogen from the atmosphere, but solely from the earth through their roots. Air plants contain an abundance of nitrogen, but aside from this suggestion, Mr. Darwin's work indicates that the uses of glandular hairs, and perhaps plant hairs of any kind, are connected with the absorption of nitrogen. The view that plants do derive much nitrogen from the atmosphere receives now additional force from an excellent paper published in the Country Gentleman of Aug. 27, from the pen of Prof. Atwater, of the Wesleyan University, Conn. Of the nitrogen in plants on an acre, his results give over one-third as derived from the atmosphere.
 
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