76 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



lars per ton cheaper than here, bringing the cost of potash down 

 to four and three-tenths cents per pound. 



While the high-grade sulphate and muriate rule at present 

 prices it is not economical for any one to pay more than ten to 

 tweh'e dollars per ton for Kainit. The potash can be got as 

 cheaply in muriate of potash, and the heavy ballast of common salt, 

 Epsom salts, and Glauber's salts is not worth ten dollars a ton. 



Within the last few years the quality of potash salts which have 

 come into our Connecticut market has greatly improved, a fact 

 which I am inclined to attribute rather to the supervision of the 

 Experiment Station than to any unusually rapid approach of the 

 millennium ! 



Formerly we received a great many miscellaneous things, some 

 of them factory waste products and some of them from the Stass- 

 furt works, which were worth nowhere near what was aske^ and 

 paid for them. Let me mention one or two of them. 



"Sulphate of Potash 75.9 per cent. Dr. Ulex analysis." This 

 actually had 21.3 per cent, of sulphate of potash, the rest as chlo- 

 ride, and all the potash salts making but 62 per cent, of the whole • 

 instead of 75.9 per cent. 



"Sulphate of Potash 55 per cent." had 15.9 percent, of sulphate 

 and 30 per cent, of muriate, besides 26.6 per cent, of salt. 



Then we have had sulphate of potash so poorly manufactured 

 that a large excess of oil of vitriol remained in it, making it sour 

 and corrosive. It was used on a root crop and apparently ruined 

 it. 



In Germany, in the neighborhood of the mines, a number of 

 preparations are offered and sold to some extent, which are frauds 

 in that they are not what their name would imply. 



"Crude sulphate of potash," "prepared Kainit," "Kainitic 

 manurial salt," and the like are made up of mother liquors which 

 are of no further use in the manufacture. Suppose one is stated to 

 contain 50 per cent, of sulphate of potash. Analysis shows that 

 it contains a good deal of muriate of potash and the rest is in 

 combination with sulphate of magnesia and chloride of magne- 

 sia, a natural or artificial Kainit. If objection is made the manu- 

 facturer is ready with the reply that he meant all the time that 

 the salt contained 50 per cent, of "potential " or possible sulphate; 

 that is you could make — if you knew how — fifty pounds of sul- 

 phate of potash out of every hundred, and that this mode of state- 

 ment — which to his uninitiated customer seems very much like 



