230 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



interest to the people here, and I want to ask your indulgence 

 for a few minutes. 



In the first place, there is need for investigation along this 

 line, from two standpoints ; one from the standpoint of soil 

 improvement, and the other from the standpoint of cheaper 

 feeds. I want to speak of the first. For the last six or seven 

 years, it has been my privilege, and a part of my duty, to pre- 

 pare for use about a carload of chemicals every year, and I have 

 found that the prices of phosphates and potash materials have 

 remained about uniform for the past eight years. There has 

 been very little change in the price from year to year. How 

 is it with regard to nitrogen? When I started in making 

 home mixtures, I could buy nitrate of soda for from thirty- 

 seven to thirty-eight dollars per ton. How is it today? The 

 price has gone up. Last winter, when getting the prices for 

 chemicals, I became quite concerned on the nitrate of soda 

 question, and I began to look around to see if I could find any- 

 thing for a substitute. I found I could buy nitrate of potash, 

 and get it more cheaply than I could the same amount of ni- 

 trogen and of potash in the form of nitrate of soda and 

 muriate of potash. I talked it over with my proprietor, and 

 he said you had better put in five tons of it at seventy-five dol- 

 lars a ton. This year I thought I would be a little forehanded, 

 and for several reasons it seemed best that we should put in 

 our chemicals in the fall, and I began to get prices. I found 

 nitrate of soda quoted at fifty to fifty-two dollars per ton in 

 New York. I sent to the house where we got our nitrate of 

 potash last year, and it was ninety dollars per ton. That knocked 

 out the nitrate of potash question. I investigated carefully to 

 see where we could buy our chemicals in the bulk best, and 

 found, as the result, that we could save about a dollar a ton, 

 on the average, over New York prices by buying in Baltimore ; 

 but at the best, the nitrate of soda cost us over fifty dollars per 

 ton delivered. Now this great advance in the price of nitro- 

 genous fertilizers brings up a very serious question. What 



