154 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and will stand up, and I am enabled to get a more valuable 

 crop. 



I have regretted the turn that this discussion has taken. 

 This Board has been laboring now for twenty years, almost, 

 upon this question of fertilizers, aud it is about time that we 

 acknowledged that something has been done, that we have 

 learned something. We have spent our money and paid our 

 high taxes, to which some of the speakers have referred — 

 and have we not got anything in return? Has not the State 

 Board of Massachusetts beaten anything into us as farmers ? 

 Don't we know anything from what they have taught us ? 

 If we do, let us sum it up and see what we know. Have 

 they not taught us one thing — that plant-food is manure? 

 Gentlemen talk as if there was some magic about commer- 

 cial fertilizers. Do we not all know that any manure de- 

 pends for its effect upon the plant-food that it contains, the 

 phosphoric acid, the nitrogen and the potash, and it makes 

 no difference whether it is barrelled up and labelled one 

 thino- or another? Have Ave not learned that? If Ave know 

 it, let us take it as an accepted fjict. We can just as well 

 build up an exhausted field A\ath manure that is called l)y 

 one name as another. If it only contains the potash, the 

 phosphoric acid, and the nitrogen, A\'hat do aa^c care what its 

 name is, or in AA'hat form it comes to us? It makes no 

 difference. 



The only question is, Avhere can Ave buy these three ele- 

 ments the cheapest? What name do they come under the 

 cheapest? That is the question. With what are they com- 

 pounded ? They are compounded sometimes with substances 

 with which they are not so available as they are Avhen com- 

 bined Avith other substances. When Ave buy our potash and 

 phosphoric acid in stable manure, it is not so available as it 

 is AAdien the venders of commercial fertilizers have manipu- 

 lated it and made it available almost instantaneously, so that 

 Avhen our farmers soav it on a rainy day they see its effect 

 the next day in the deeper green of the grass. Then what 

 must we do when we apply these elements in the form of 

 stable manure ? We must convey them to the plant that is 

 greedy, that can digest them, that can assimilate them. 

 There is no plant that we grow that is so greedy and Avill eat 



