64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tinually receiving from correspondents such questions as 

 these : How can I bring up a run-down farm ? Will it pay- 

 to buy chemical fertilizers ? Will commercial fertilizers da 

 as well as stable manure ? What kinds of fertilizers shall I 

 buy ? These also are questions which, for a number of years, 

 I have been trying to answer for myself, and to-day, at the 

 request of your Secretary, I propose to tell you in a plain 

 way, from a practical point of view, how and what answers 

 I have obtained ; answered, in part, by a careful study of 

 what others [have done and written, and, in part, by a close 

 observation of many experimental plots to which I have ap- 

 plied different fertilizing materials in different proportions. 



Chemists tell us that our growing plants are composed of 

 fourteen or more elements; four organic or volatile elements, 

 viz., carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, and ten inor- 

 ganic or assistant elements, viz., phosphorus, sulphur, sili- 

 com, chlorine, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, 

 iron and manganese. Science also teaches us that without 

 sufficient supply of each of these elements in an available 

 form, our crops must fail to grow. It has been found that 

 the air furnishes an abundant supply of all the organic; or 

 volatile elements except nitrogen, and that the soil must fur- 

 nish a part of the nitrogen and all the saline elements. That 

 is, a soil that is deficient in nitrogen or any one of these 

 saline elements, is practically barren, until the needed ele- 

 ment is furnished, even if it be ever so rich in all the other 

 elements of plant-food. Numerous experiments have dem- 

 onstrated that our cultivated fields contain sufficient supply 

 of all these required substances except nitrogen, phosphoric 

 acid and potash, and that if we furnish these three with lime 

 and magnesia in some instances, in the proportions found in 

 the perfect plant of the kind we wish to grow, and in avail- 

 able condition, we have a complete manure, and, under 

 ordinary conditions, a perfect substitute for stable manure, 

 with the advantage of less weight and bulk to handle, and a 

 quicker action. 



The use of commercial fertilizers containing these needed 

 elements, and in such proportions as the proposed crops re- 

 quire, is a step in the direction of higher and more scientihc 

 agriculture, but it is not so far as we should expect to go in 



