1882.] COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS. 127 



Of what value is plant food in abundance if the crop cannot 

 reach it ? You cannot study the question of food without, at 

 the same time, studying in some of their aspects the consumers 

 of food. No one is so keenly alive to the importance of hav- 

 ing food for his family or his animals used to the best advan- 

 tage as he who has paid his money for it. The same feeling 

 governs in regard to food for plants. This bag of fine powder 

 which you can take on your shoulder and carry across the field 

 has cost you five dollars, and it will not do to waste it. If the 

 plants cannot find and reach it after it is applied, you might as 

 well have never bought it. Whatever conditions are necessary to 

 enable your crop to find and appropriate the food you have pur- 

 chased for it must be known and supplied. 1 think few far- 

 mers have used commercial fertilizers long without having their 

 methods and practices of tillage improved in consequence. They 

 have demanded better implements of tillage, and this, like every 

 demand which represents a real need, has been supplied. It may 

 seem fanciful to some that I should find one of the causes of im- 

 proved implements of tillage as well as improved theory and prac- 

 tice in the impulse which the use of commercial fertilizers has 

 given to agriculture. But I think the connection can be readily 

 traced. I cannot now follow it step by step, and having given 

 you these few suggestions, leave the matter with each one of you 

 for such consideration as you may choose to bestow upon it. 



I count it no small gain to agriculture that those who do its 

 work and those who teach its science have at last found a meeting- 

 place — a common ground whereon to stand — a subject of common 

 interest to think about and to talk about. Up to the time when 

 commercial fertilizers occupied a large space in the farmer's thought 

 there was no such common ground. The farmer demanded direct 

 and immediate benefit from the teachings of science. Whatever 

 was remote was to him uncertain, and he would have none of it. 

 And this was the character of inost that was offered him. It may 

 have been of great value, and his refusal of it most unwise; but he 

 acted according to his own habit of thought, and took no risks. But 

 he had not used commercial fertilizers largely or long before he had 

 accumulated an assortment of problems which had a bearing ob- 

 vious and direct upon the profitable conduct of his business. One 

 fertilizer succeeds splendidly on a certain field or with a given crop, 

 and fails elsewhere or when applied to a different crop. A fertilizer 

 which does finely at first, afterwards loses its effect, and seems actu- 



