No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 449 



away from barnyards and but little of the fertilizer elements left for 

 the soil. Yet you see good results where this yard manure is put, 

 but it is largely due to the mulching effect of the manure. 



A fertilizer has two values, — its commercial and agricultural 

 value. Its commercial value is determined by the market value of 

 its constituents and the cost of labor required in preparing it for 

 the farmers' use. The agricultural value is the increase in quality 

 and quantity it will produce in the crop to which it is applied. Ger- 

 many claims to have increased their crop productions sevenfold by 

 the use of fertilizers ''commercial." 



The use of fertilizers is traveling westward farther and farther each 

 year over our once fertile prairies, which years ago it was claimed 

 would never need any feeding in the shape of commercial fertilizers. 

 In Pennsylvania the use of fertilizers has doubled or nearly so in 

 the last ten years. The sections of the State that have the best soil 

 appear to use more per acre than the sections that have less fertile 

 soil. I have experimented along this line and I find there is a limit 

 as to the amount that can be used to a profit. 



FERTILIZER LAW 



The Fertilizer Law appears to be doing a great good to the farmers 

 inasmuch as the law compels their goods to come up to a certain 

 standard. It is a noticeable fact that there are less stars in the 

 report which were used to indicate that the goods fell below the 

 standard of guarantee. 



THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT 



The Agricultural Department is doing good work in connection 

 with its agents who have gathered eighteen hundred and nine fer- 

 tilizer samples, of which six hundred and sixty -nine were analyzed. 

 Preference was given to those which have not been recently analyzed. 

 The samples analyzed group themselves as follows: 436 complete 

 fertilizers ; 8 dissolve bones furnishing phosphoric acid and nitrogen ; 

 1123 rock and potash fertilizers; 47 acidulated rock and phosphates, 

 furnishing phosphoric acid; 24 ground bones furnishing phosphoric 

 acid and nitrogen and 31 miscellaneous samples which group them- 

 selves in substance not properly classified under the foregoing heads. 



CONCLUSION 



Farmers should post themselves in the judicious use of fertilizers 

 and study the analysis. No study will pay better. The Isiad is the 

 farmer's bank, and when the land is enriched through the judicious 

 use of fertilizers the bank account will be increased by which he 

 makes himself a business man of greater use and influence in the 

 community wherein he resides, and will become an object lesson to 

 his neighbors to the extent that we lead, others follow. He who 

 makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a public 

 benefactor. 



29—7—1910 



