VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 51 



needs.* He can, however, tell us something as to the make-up of the 

 soil and give us some conception of its needs. 



He tells us in the first place that plants need in their daily diet 

 fourteen elements. An element is that portion of matter which by no 

 possible means known to man, be they mechanical, chemical, physical 

 or what not, can be subdivided into two materials different the one 

 from the other. Thus the common salt of our tables or the water 

 which we drink are neither of them elements. Either of these in the 

 chemist's hands can be changed into two materials utterly unlike their 

 originals. The white crystalline salt may be resolved into a silver- 

 white and very light metal called sodium, and a choking yellowish- 

 green gas called chlorin. Similarly, water may be broken up into two 

 gases, each, colorless, tasteless and odorless, known as oxygen and 

 hydrogen. There is no chemist who has yet been able to make from 

 either of the three gases or from the metal anything unlike them. For 

 instance, a good chemist can in a very few minutes evolve the yellowish- 

 green gas, chlorin, from common salt; but no one, despite repeated 

 attempts for over a century, has ever been able to get anything out of 

 the yellowish-green gas but the same gas. Chlorin, then, is an element, 

 a material which cannot be subdivided into two parts unlike itself. 



There are some seventy or more elements recognized by chemists. 

 Only fourteen of these, as has been said, enter into the plant's bill of 

 fare. Plants are rather particular about what they eat. They insist 

 that the bill of fare shall be a complete one. They sulk and, indeed, 

 will starve to death if any one or two of these be omitted. So far 



*In this connection some may be interested in reading the following circular 

 letter which is sent by the Vermont Experiment Station in reply to the many people 

 who write to it touching soil analysis. 



"It is a very common notion on the part of farmers that a chemist can tell by soil 

 analysis just what a soil needs, and may by means of the analysis prescribe just how 

 that soil may be fertilized to obtain the best results. Thia notion, however, is errone- 

 ous, at any rate so far as concerns the Eastern states. Chemists can analyse the virgin 

 soil of the West, for instance, and the analysis may mean something ; but it means but 

 little with the Eastern soils. The reasons for this are several. In the first place, it is 

 difficult for a farmer to take an adequate and correct sample. Soil samples taken 

 three feet apart in the same field may and quite often do analyze quite differently ; and 

 the question is, which is right, if either? Then again, because of the fact that a large 

 share of Eastern soils — other than sod land freshly broken up — have been fertil- 

 ized more or less, and, because much of the manurial constituents thus applied is not 

 used up but is unevenly distributed, there enters a constant source of error into the 

 problem. But more important than either of these is the inability of the chemist to 

 distinguish between plant food which is available this year and that which will not be 

 available for a hundred years to come. If you should send us a sample of soil 

 our chemist could tell you the different ingredients of plant food it contained ; but he 

 could not. nor could anyone, predict with any degree of certainty how much of this 

 was available and how much would not be serviceable. It is to be hoped that this 

 problem, which is being worked on by a great many scientists, may be solved before 

 long ; but at present it is an almost fatal obstacle to soil analysis. 



It is the almost universal custom of Eastern experiment stations, when handed a 

 query like yours, to suggest, as about the only feasible means of determining what the 

 soil needs, a series of small field plots upon the farm or piece in question, upon which 

 the sundry forms of plant food may be used in order that the farmer may himself 

 experiment and determine for himself his soil needs. One might, for instance, 

 have half a dozen or more contiguous plots (small ones), to one of which, we will say, 

 acid phosphate is applied to furnish phosphoric acid ; to another, muriate of potash to 

 furnish potash, to another, dried blood to furnish nitrogen; to a fourth, phos- 

 phoric acid and potash ; to a fifth, nitrogen and potash ; to a sixth, nitrogen and 

 phosphoric acid ; to a seventh, all three ; leaving at each end small unfertilized plats 

 as a check measure of the ordinary crop. A year or two of work in this way will give 

 the farmer a pretty fair notion of the needs of his own soils. 



It is fully understood that this is a troublesome, expensive and not thoroughly 

 satisfactory method ; but it is the best that is now to be proposed." 



