138 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



dletowii. I think that for farmers who are situated away 

 from convenient and cheap means of communication, com- 

 mercial fertilizers are their only resource, and I think they 

 are satisfactory resources. 



Mr. Sedgwick. I am not aware that the experiments of 

 Prof. Atwater have been attacked in the sense of their not 

 being practical in their results. Certainly no experiments 

 which have been carried on in this country have attracted 

 more attention from fertilizer men, or the general average 

 of whose results have so corresponded with the ideas of men 

 in the fertilizer business as those of Prof. Atwater. It is 

 only a few years since that Peruvian guano was the standard 

 for commercial fertilizers, and no super-phosphate which was 

 put upon this market was considered a good article unless it 

 contained six or eight per cent, of nitrogen, Peruvian guano 

 being the standard, which they say contains fifteen per cent, 

 of nitrogen. The experiments of Prof. Atwater show that so 

 large a percentage of nitrogen is not profitable for the or- 

 dinary farmer to use. Furthermore, if you watch the analy- 

 ses of commercial fertilizers as they have been put upon this 

 market for the last five or six years, (I have had occasion to 

 do so recently,) and compare them with the analyses of com- 

 mercial fertilizers published in the reports of our State Board of 

 Agriculture for the last ten or twelve years, you will sec that 

 in nearly all the best brands of fertilizers the percentage of 

 nitrogen has steadily decreased, while the percentage of phos- 

 phoric acid and potash has increased. I know a certain high 

 grade super-phosphate which was put upon the market a few 

 years ago, containing no potash whatever, but which was very 

 high in nitrogen, and that same article is now being manu- 

 factured with a less percentage of nitrogen, and a greater 

 percentage of phosphoric acid and potash, and it gives just as 

 good results, practically, to the farmer as it did when it con- 

 tained nitrogen in excess. 



This being so, there comes in another question, the ques- 

 tion of the cost of the fertilizer to the farmer. The enormous 

 demand for fertilizers in the past few years has increased the 

 price of nitrogen immensely, the supply being practically lim- 



