366 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sible to imitate their characters so that the worst may appear equal 

 to the best. 



The farmer is therefore compelled to call to his assistance the 

 chemist, and then he meets new difficulties. A reliable analysis 

 is costly, and its results must be expressed in the language of 

 chemistry, and with this language he is not familiar." Not one 

 farmer in a hundred can determine anything satisfactory regarding 

 the value of a manure from a statement of the results of analysis 

 furnished him by ever so good a chemist. It would not be very 

 difficult for him to obtain sufficient empirical knowledge to read 

 an analysis uuderstandingly if all chemists used the same methods 

 in expressing results, but this is not the case. Some for instance 

 will state the percentage of "soluble phosphate," others of " bi- 

 phosphate," and others still of "phosphoric acid," using, and justly 

 too, in each case very different figures, and yet all conveying the 

 same information to those who are able to read them uuderstand- 

 ingly, but only confused and uncertain meaning to others. 



What is much worse than this, because dishonest, is the fact 

 that some chemists in the pay of manufacturers, or for a " consid- 

 eration " from a transient customer, have, sometimes, and appa- 

 rently with purpose, expressed the results of analysis in such a 

 way as is liable to mislead any but those pretty well acquainted 

 with chemistry ; at the same time usually keeping within the limits 

 of technical accuracy, or avoiding demonstrable error. 



There is another phase of this subject to which reference may 

 not be out of place here, since it sometimes occurs with respect to 

 fertilizers. I refer to those analyses which occasionally appear as 

 advertisements in the public prints and which are expressed in 

 such terms, and accompanied with such remarks, as to impress a 

 hasty or unprofessional reader with an idea of considerable value, 

 or of some notewortliy merit, when a closer examination shows it 

 equally capable of bearing a different construction, or what is 

 more probable, to be elaborately empty of any important informa- 

 tion ; in other woi'ds, a mere puff of the "spread-eagle", " highfa- 

 lutin " order, masked in professional language. 



It was with a view to meet the wants of farmers, so far as could 

 be accomplished by legislation, and in response to urgent calls 

 from various sections of the State for some adequate means of 

 security against fraud, that a statute was enacted in this State last 

 winter to take effect in July following, and is consequently now in 

 force. 



