Chapter 1: The Ends of the Earth

    The books starts off with a gathering for the British Academy of Sciences. Everyone is at a vaudeville palace because the auditorium they were suppose to use was burnt down.

                                             

This is what a Vaudeville palace would look like. They would look like a theater where a play would be shown and the more important people would sit at the front while the less important people and the ladies would sit in the back row or the second story. 

Everyone was dressed up. The men were in their formal wear and the women were in beautiful gowns. The people are there to see a famous scientists called Sir William Crookes speak.

                           

Sir William Crooke

Crookes was the president of the British Academy of Sciences in 1898. Crookes made many discoveries some of the are the Crooke's tube which was the early stages of the cathode ray tube and a newly found element called thallium. This gathering was specifically for his inauguration to being the new president of the academy of science. Everyone was talking and fanning themselves because it was so hot and every year the inauguration is so boring yet they have to be there. This year was different instead of bragging about himself Crookes decided to catch everyone's attention by saying “England and all other nations are in deathly peril”. Everyone went silent and stopped whatever else they were doing. He explains by the population growing the food is disappearing. Crookes then continues to blame this on our medical and sanitation strives. He believed that everyone would start to starve in the 1930’s. Crookes then  gave his solution: better and more farms. Seems like a simple explanation more farms equal more food, but the soil wasn’t going to be fertile forever so we needed more animals that would produce manure to fertilize the land and also another source of food he said crop rotation would be a good plan too. Crop rotation is when you never plant the same plant on a piece of land twice in a row so the land can become fertile again. Some plants that fertilize the land is peas and clover. Crookes plan did not work because one important event. The industrial revolution. The industrial revolution made millions of jobs and that's where the people went. They gave up on farming and went to work in factories. Crooke’s proposal was right people started to starve because there were less farmers and the population kept growing tremendously. Crooke also said in his speech that farmers now had to deal with what land they got. All the great plains were already discovered so there was no new land for the farmers to grow on. Even though crop rotation and the placing of manure was still happening the land was still losing its fertility. Crooke came up with another plan by saying there's just not enough manure in the world so we must create our own fertilizer. Crooke said that these new chemical manures had to be made or millions would die. He thought only chemist could save us now.

    Manures nowadays are made up of mostly three elements: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Plants need these three elements to be able to survive. Nitrogen is the most important element for life. Every cell in a plant, DNA, and RNA has some amount of nitrogen in it. Nitrogen also determines the amount a plant will grow. Little nitrogen little crop, lots of nitrogen lots of crop. But nitrogen is hard to get for a plant. Air is made up of eighty percent nitrogen. Then why can’t a plant use it? Plants can’t absorb the nitrogen from the air so they can’t use it. Plants use nitrogen in other forms than air they get it from fixed nitrogen which can be found in manures.

    Many people didn’t believe what Crooke said. This was because there was no natural manure shortage. Farmers had tons and tons. Ship loads of manure was brought to England from South America all the time. Crooke then again talked about the future like he had before of too many mouths to feed. Crooke said there is not one now, but there will be one soon because there are limits on the manure supply in South America. He showed the people his charts and proof that in just decades the manure supply could not be held up. For example wheat needed fertile soil constantly and was the crop that needed the most manure. Each season tons and tons of manure was used. Crooke then made a tremendous ending by talking to his fellow chemists and reaching out to them. He talked about how other discoveries can create wealth and give people luxuries that they could only dream of, but this discovery could mean life or death. Many people were very impressed of his speech even though some left halfway through because they thought he was talking nonsense. But today Crookes speech saved many people. If no one discovered a different source of fixed oxygen only four billions of the world's people could actually eat.