But in the decomposition that thus occurs through the agency of the putrefactive bacteria it very commonly happens that some of the food material is broken down into compounds too simple for use as plant food. As will be seen by a glance at the diagram (Fig. 25 D), a portion of the cleavage products resulting from the destruction of these animal foods takes the form of carbonic-acid gas and water. These ingredients are at once in condition for plant life, as shown by the dotted lines. They pass off into the air, and the green leaves of vegetation everywhere again seize them, assimilate them, and use them as food. Thus it is that the carbon and the oxygen have completed the cycle, and have come back again to the position in the circle where they started. In regard to the nitrogen portion of the food, however, it very commonly happens that the products which arise as the result of the decomposition processes are not yet in proper condition for plant food. They are reduced into a condition actually too simple for the use of plants. As a result of these putrefactive changes, the nitrogen products of animal life are broken frequently into compounds as simple as ammonia (NH3), or into compounds which the chemists speak of as nitrites (Fig. 25 at D). Now these compounds are not ordinarily within the reach of plant life. The luxuriant vegetation of the globe extracts its nitrogen from the soil in a form more complex than either of the compounds here mentioned; for, as we have seen, it is nitrates chiefly that furnish plants with their nitrogen food factor. But nitrates contain considerable oxygen. Ammonia, which is one of the products of putrefactive de- composition, contains no oxygen, and nitrites, another factor, contains less oxygen than nitrates. These bodies are thus too simple for plants to make use of as a source of nitrogen. The chemical destruction of the food material which results from the action of the putrefactive bacteria is too thorough, and the nitrogen foods are not yet in condition to be used by plants.