1882.] COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS. 89 



and die. He sent a sample of the soil but we could not dis- 

 cover anything out of the way. There was no iron compound 

 or poison that we could find. But if any one has any ques- 

 tion of that sort which he wishes answered, and will apply to 

 us, we will do what we can; but the station cannot undertake 

 to give the farmers of Connecticut an equivalent for their 

 money in analyzing their soils, until we get some knowledge 

 which has not dawned as yet. The more that we have done 

 in the line of analysis of soils, the more unsatisfactory such 

 work appears to be for common purposes. We have, how- 

 ever, learned that magnesia exists abundantly in all the Con- 

 necticut soils that we have examined. That would go to 

 show that you need not buy Kainit, for there is magnesia 

 in it. We have found that certain kinds of soil, those formed 

 from the red sandstone, contain compounds of potash. If 

 that is universally true, there is no need of putting potash on 

 soils of that class. So far as that goes we have a useful indi- 

 cation; but an analysis of soil, to determine wliat kind of 

 manure to apply, commonly fails of useful results. 



Question. Will the manure from a hundred pounds of 

 offal passed through swine be of any more value than if com- 

 posted ? 



Mr. Gold. I should suppose it would not. If any one 

 differs from that opinion, he can say so. It is a question 

 whether the pigs would be any better for it. That is a ques- 

 tion that comes home to every man who wants to eat pork. 



Prof. Johnson. The question is whether a given amount 

 of offal passed through pigs would be improved as manure 

 over what it would be if composted. That depends. If the 

 ^ pig is young and growing, the offal will not all get through 

 him, it will partly stay in him, and it will not be so valuable 

 for manure as if it had been composted; but if it is fed 

 judiciously, it will be worth more as pig than it could be 

 as manure. If the pig is mature, and is neither gaining nor 

 losing in weight, there will be no loss of the material by 

 traveling through the animal. An animal that is neither 

 gaining nor losing in weight takes nothing from the food that 

 is of value as a manure, and the oiTal after having gone 



