New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 101 



to use. The prices thus found enable the farmer to make out his 

 own schedule of valuations and they apply accurately to his special 

 conditions. 



Attention is here called to a serious abuse of the schedule of 

 valuations published by the Station. In some instances fertilizer 

 manufacturers have used in their printed circulars schedule prices 

 which had been published some years previous, when the prices 

 were considerably higher, and they have quoted these as being 

 authorized by the Station. Using these old figures as a basis for 

 making a commercial valuation of their goods, they have obtained 

 figures which represented their fertilizers as selling for less than 

 they were actually worth. Whenever our attention has been 

 called to this form of imposition, we have stopped it. It has also 

 been reported that some agents use the same means in selling 

 goods to farmers, showing one of the Station bulletins and quoting 

 its figures. If farmers will keep themselves informed either by 

 consulting our latest bulletins or by ascertaining for themselves, 

 as suggested above, the latest prices direct from large dealers, 

 they need not be the victims of overzealous agents. 



(2) Shall farmers purchase mixed fertilizers or unmixed 

 materials? 



It has been represented to farmers that peculiar virtues are 

 imparted to the elements of plant-food by proper mixing and that 

 this proper mixing can be accomplished only by means not at the 

 command of farmers. Such statements are misrepresentations, 

 - based either upon the ignorance of the person who makes them or 

 upon his anxiety to sell mixed goods. Nitrate of soda, for illus- 

 tration, does its work in plant nutrition in exactly the same man- 

 ner whether it is added to the soil as part of ^ mixture or whether 

 the ingredients' of the mixture are applied separately. The avail- 

 ability of plant-food is not usually affected by mixing. Other 

 conditions determine whether a fertilizer shall be applied in mixed 

 form or in separate materials. 



As to the ability of farmers to mix their own fertilizers, no 

 doubt exists except in the minds of those who desire to sell goods 



