New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 685 



(1) Under the present law, there are 27 cases in which complete 

 fertilizers are deficient in composition to an extent sufficient to make 

 them violations, while under the provisions of the former law there 

 would be 68 cases of violation, or 41 more than at present; in the case 

 of 37 samples of fertilizing materials and special mixtures, 7 are vio- 

 lations under the present law, while all would be violations under 

 the former law, or 30 more than at present. 



(2) The greater number of violations occurring under the provisions 

 of the law in force previous to 1910 is due largely to the fact that the 

 present law exempts larger deficiencies in many cases than did the 

 former law. This is shown especially in the case of nitrogen in high- 

 grade complete fertilizers, dried blood, bone and tankage, and also in 

 the case of potash in the form of muriate. 



(3) In all cases the present law affords less protection to purchasers 

 than did the former law (a) when nitrogen is present in amount ex- 

 ceeding 3.3 per ct. (including about one-sixth of all samples of com- 

 plete fertilizers), (b) when phosphoric acid is present in amounts ex- 

 ceeding 5 per ct. (including 597 out of 614 samples of complete fer- 

 tilizers), (c) when potash is present in amounts exceeding 5 per ct. 

 (including 355 out of 614 sample^ of complete fertilizers), and (d) 

 in the case of nearly all high-grade fertilizing materials, such as potash 

 salts, acid phosphate, sodium nitrate, ammonium sulphate, etc. 

 The higher the percentage of a plant-food constituent in a fertilizer, 

 the greater is the amount of absolute exemption of deficiency, and this 

 works against the protection of purchasers. 



(4) The change from the provisions of the former law to those of 

 the present was due to certain obvious imperfections, chief of which 

 were the following: (a) The percentage of deficiency allowed was fixed 

 in all cases without regard to the amount of the constituent guaranteed. 

 For example, an exemption of .33 per ct. of nitrogen was permitted 

 whether the fertilizer might contain 0.8 per ct. or 15 per ct., which 

 was obviously unfair to the purchaser in the case of low-grade goods, 

 (b) No provision was made for permitting any deficiency above the 

 amount of exemption to be offset by any surplus of other constituents 

 in the fertilizer. Thus in case of a fertilizer containing a deficiency 

 of more than 0.5 per ct. of phosphoric acid, no relief was furnished 

 even though the fertilizer might contain an excess of nitrogen and 

 potash having a value much greater than the amount of phosphoric 

 acid deficient. The provision in the present law permitting an offset 



