62 BOAED OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



community are largely engaged in trade, and the farmers find a 

 ready market for whatever they can sell. Nitrogen, potash, phos- 

 phoric acid, and all the other elements of ]51ant food are being 

 carted off from the land at quite a rapid rate. But what of it ? 

 There seems to be a plenty left. 



Some farmers, to be sure, find the yield of their land increased 

 by putting on stable manure. Others not. Some use oil as a 

 fertilizer and like it; but why they use either they don't really 

 know. The wants of the community, all this time, are becoming 

 more complex. Food and clothing are not the only things to be 

 got from the soil. The growth of different manufactures and of 

 commerce make incidentally enormous demands on its fertility, 

 and the problem becomes daily more and more pressing, how shall 

 we bring our fields rapidly to their maximum producing power, 

 and how shall we keep them tl:;^re ? Our land is becoming in 

 places actually less productive than formerly. We are doing our 

 best to meet the demands made, and we are rapidly coming to our 

 wits' ends. 



This was the situation when agricultural science became a living 

 fact, because it was within reach and had become a necessity. And 

 the use of commercial fertilizers and the beginning of a trade in 

 theni dates from this time when agricultural science had its birth. 



My plan now is to speak of some of our common fertilizing 

 materials, giving what facts I may which are of interest with re- 

 gard to their past use, and the mode of their occurrence, and per- 

 haps adding, by the way, a little useful information in regard to 

 the present condition of the trade in them. It is natural that we 

 should begin by speaking of Peruvian guano. It was the first 

 costly fertilizer which found extensive use in this country, and it 

 has been and still is, to a considerable extent, the farmer's stand- 

 ard of comparison. Nothing has been commoner in advertise- 

 ments and testimonials with regard to fertilizers than the assertion 

 "equal in -effect to Peruvian guano." Pine Island guano. Soluble 

 Pacific guano, fish guano, etc., applied to articles which probably 

 contain no trace of real guano, bear testimony to the position 

 which guano holds as a standard of comparison in the minds of 

 farmers. Or can it be that the aesthetic soul of the inventor of 

 such names, imagined that there was a suggestion of sentiment; 

 of something lonely and very far off in the words Island and Pa- 

 cific, which the young and tender crop would recognize and 

 respond to I 



