1882.] COMMERCIAL FEETILTZERS. 125 



supplied no plant can be built. Some of your accumulated mate- 

 rials will remain, some will waste, but no use can be made of any 

 until that which is lacking is supplied. And then he may go on 

 to tell bow that not only must all these materials be supplied, but 

 they must be in suitable form and condition. It is nails the build- 

 er wants, not pig iron, and he can neither clapboard nor shingle 

 his house with rough hewn logs. And so he will tell you that 

 your phosphoric acid must be soluble and your nitrogen com- 

 pounds such as have been proven suitable, or the building of the 

 crop must be delayed until the requisite transformation can be 

 acomplished. To conclude, he may give you the very latest con- 

 cerning nitrogen, its sources of supply and the varying feeding 

 capacities of different plants as related to it. That will answer 

 perhaps for the outline of a scientific agricultural lecture of to- 

 day. It might of course, be varied greatly, and he who does not 

 like it is at liberty to construct one entirely different. But be 

 your scheme what it may, if you bring into it the common science 

 of to-day upon this subject, you would make it both unintelligible 

 and uninteresting to the well-informed farmer of thirty years ago. 

 Our thoughts have been turned into other channels, and our very 

 speech "bewrayeth " us. It has become enlarged and enriched by 

 the introduction of terms which ftur fathers had no occasion to 

 use. Nor is this additional information and newly awakened 

 thought upon a matter of mere curious speculation. If it were 

 you would not find farmers meddling with it. It leads directly to 

 practical results of the highest importance. I do not see how we 

 can now stop short of that point where we shall know with rea- 

 sonable certainty just what material our crops need; and supplying 

 that and only that, shall be able to eliminate from our business 

 operations one uncertainty against which we have been compelled 

 to insure at heavy cost. The waste involved in the supply of 

 material for which there was no need, and which could not be 

 used, has been, in the aggregate, simply enormous, and we ought 

 to be able to prevent it. We are not very near that point as yet, but 

 we have started thitherward, and notwithstanding obstacles and 

 perplexities and apparent failures and temporary strayings from 

 the path we must and shall ultimately reach it, and so far as I can 

 see this movement, creditable in present performance and full of 

 beneficent promise in the future, received its primal impulse from 

 the use of commercial fertilizers, 



I have, in this connection, a few things to say which I do not 



