Minutes. 19 



as the phosphate of South Carolina. The potash, finally, is 

 usually found in some form of commercial potash soils, which 

 are mined in Germany very extensively. 



Now, as I said, in buying fertilizers you buy them for the 

 sake of the nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid they con- 

 tain. But how shall the farmer to whom the names are a 

 little bit of a mystery, who is not familiar with the differ- 

 ent sources of these three elements, how shall he buy these 

 fertilizers intelligently? You need to know, in order to buy 

 them intelligently, how much of these materials, to be 

 valuable, must be contained and how much to pay for it. 

 The only way. to find the value of a commercial fertilizer 

 is to have an analysis of it. There are very cases where 

 we can tell the value by simple inspection. Most materials 

 used as fertilizers, but especially mixed fertilizers, contain- 

 ing a number of things ground together, are very liable to 

 great adulteration. A poor fertilizer may smell just 

 as bad as a good one. The only way to tell a good fertil- 

 izer is to have an analysis made of it. As to the second 

 point, as to what to pay for it, there too it is necessary to 

 call in the aid of an expert. In the east, in the experiment 

 stations, it has been made a part of their business to find 

 out what they can be bought for in the market. For in- 

 stance the substance nitrogen. Every year it is endeavored to 

 be found out what the retail price of some source of nitrogen, 

 as nitrate of soda, is. They find out the price and about 

 how much nitrogen it contains. From this data it is very 

 easy to find how much nitrate of soda you have to get to 

 get a pound of nitrogen. Last spring it was found you 

 would have to pay about 18 cents. To get enough sulphide 

 of ammonia at retail to furnish you a pound of nitrogen 

 you would have to pay about 18^ cents, and so on through 

 the list. They have published this information in a little 

 table, a table of estimated trade values, showing what is a 

 fair price per pound for these fertilizers. Having this and 

 also an analysis of the fertilizer we are in a fair condition 

 to know what is a fair price for that fertilizer. Suppose our 

 fertilizer contains 10 per cent, of nitrogen and 4 per cent, of 

 phosphoric acid. Then we get 200 pounds of nitrogen 



