86 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Mr. Gold. I visited the farm of the late Dr. Grant, of En- 

 field, many years ago. Very many in the audience are familiar 

 with it. He has brought it to a very high degree of fertility. 

 He attributed his success partly to drainage, which he had in- 

 troduced, but very largely from the extensive use of wool- 

 waste. He had it from a particular factory near there, and 

 the abundant application of it had certainly produced a fertil- 

 ity that I had scarcely seen anywhere else in the State. So 

 that wool-waste, although it may be, as Dr. Jenkins says, an 

 imposition in a high grade fertilizer, is yet an article to be 

 saved and employed by farmers who can obtain it at a fair 

 price. It certainly has shown its mark on Mp. Grant's farm. 



Prof. Jenkins. Perhaps I have not brought out the point 

 sufficiently, which is this : We have been in the habit of pur- 

 chasing fertilizers manufactured with the use of nitrogen 

 made from fish, or blood, or nitrates, which, when put on the 

 ground, act at once. We are compelled to pay twenty, twen- 

 ty-five, or thirty cents a pound for nitrogen. That is all 

 right; we cannot do any better than that. Now, if the man- 

 ufacturers who have been using those things, substitute wool- 

 waste or leather, they are cheating us, unless they reduce their 

 price. If they will tell us " this is wool-waste," and charge us 

 only twelve or fifteen cents, all right, there is no objection ; 

 but when they give us a thing worth commercially only half 

 as much as what we have been having and ask us the same 

 price, then it is time for us to make objection. That wool- 

 waste is a good fertilizer, if a man could get it cheap enough, 

 seems well established, but it will not do to pay twenty-five 

 cents a pound for it as nitrogen. Whoever does that is fif- 

 teen cents a pound out of pocket, or ten cents, at least. 



Mr. Sedgwick. I would like to ask the Professor whether 

 nitrogen derived from nitrates is more valuable than that de- 

 rived from vegetable matter, such, for example, as cotton 

 seed. 



Dr. Jenkins. It depends upon what you mean by being 

 valuable. In the market, on the average, it costs more; it is 

 more valuable commercially. 



Mr. Sedgwick. I mean, as plant food. 



