FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 245 



a fiirthijr description. If any of you should undertake to apply any of the 

 suggestions I have made here to the common mode of shoeing in your part of 

 the country you must be jjrepared for many petty trials, most of them as pro- 

 voking as they are trivial; but you may find a consolation, as I have, in 

 remembering that a temporary failure or a possible accident is not the fault of 

 the system, but is due to an oversight or misstep on your part. 



SUPERPHOSPHATES FOR THE FARM. 



BY R. F. KEDZIE. 

 L Read at Rockford and Big Rapids Institutes.] 



How to maintain and increase the fertility of our soils, is the most important 

 question that demands an answer from the farmer to-day. The early settlers 

 regarded the soil as practically inexhaustible, and for many years cropped their 

 land heavily without returning anything to the soil. Those were indeed happy 

 times I The soil was so rich that it was simply necessary to "tickle it with the 

 hoe and it would laugh with the harvest." Farm-yard manure was then con- 

 sidered of no value whatever, an incumbrance and a nuisance. And to get 

 rid of it, the early settlers on the Mohawk are said to have resorted to the in- 

 genious expedient of dumping it on the ice in the winter season, that the 

 spring floods might sweep it away. But alas ! times have changed. Sad ex- 

 perience has demonstrated the folly of this wasteful method of farming, and 

 the descendants of those Mohawk settlers have learned that they must give 

 back to the soil a portion at least of what they remove in the crop; and to- 

 day they are glad to piece out their scanty supply of farm-yard manure with 

 guano at §50 a ton. The great want of the farmer to-day is a good cheap 

 manure. Farming is different from what it was fifty years ago. Values have 

 changed, land has increased in price, the cost of labor is greater, and our 

 farms are not as productive as formerly. The farmer knows that if he could 

 raise large crops there would be a great saving, for the cost of growing the crop 

 would be about the same as before, — and he hears of concentrated manures 

 which may be bought in the market, at high prices to be sure, but which will 

 give handsome profits. In this way, as the country has grown older, the so- 

 called commercial manures, or "superphosphates," have arisen from the ne- 

 cessities of the times to hold a place among the possible resources of the 

 farmer. 



The term "superphosphates," I use in its popular sense to include all those 

 commercial manures whose value depends upon the potash, pliosphoric acid 

 and nitrogen they contain, whether sold under the name of superphosphate or 

 " blood and bone fertilizer," or "poudrette," or "guano," etc. Before en- 

 tering upon the discussion of this subject, let us see what elements crops take 

 from the soil, and what substances are needed in manure. The great mass of 

 every plant is carbon, — but tiiere is enough of that in the air to supply plants, 

 so we do not need to add any to the soil. The same may be said of hydrogen 

 and oxygen, the materials composing water. The only organic element that 



