PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 379 



A Member: Mr. Morrill has been telling us that he cultivates his' 

 orchard about thirty or thirty-five times per year. I wish to know if that 

 cultivation wouldn't stop it. 



Mr. Morrill: The finer the condition of the soil the better the con- 

 dition for washing, and when the frost comes out in the spring and you 

 get a heavy rain the soil washes so much the more readily. 



A NEW FERTILIZER. 



Mr. Garfield: I wish to call the attention of the society to a novel state 

 of affairs. Some years ago a family in this town sent east to get furni- 

 ture to furnish their house nicely, and it was found afterward, from some 

 markings on the under side of the furniture, that it was Grand Kapids 

 furniture after all. Not long ago, within the last ten j^ears, we have had 

 Clapp's Favorite pears sold here upon the market, upon our fruit stands, 

 that were raised upon the lake shore, shipped to Chicago, rolled up in 

 fine tissue paper, and brought back here and sold as California pears. 

 Now this is preliminary to a thing, perhaps, that most of you do not 

 know about, with reference to our town today. We are shipping in 

 fertilizer from various localities, sold at from |20 to $50 per ton. There 

 is an institution that hardlv anv one knows about in this town, that has 

 a waste product that is shipped from here to German3\ The entire 

 product is sold in Germany for fertilizing purposes. I wish to call your 

 attention to an anomalous condition of affairs, that we have a by-product 

 here that is shipped by the carload, almost the shipload, to Germany to 

 fertilize orchards, and here we are shipping in fertilizers at $25 to $50 

 per ton from Germany. It is the by-product, castor bean pomace, from 

 the fly-paper factory of the Thums. They throw away about two tons 

 per day, I understand, and as soon as they get a carload they ship it to 

 New York and it is sent to Germany in bulk. I do not know the price 

 they %q\. for it, but I presume they get somewhere from five to eight dol- 

 lars per ton. The way I came to know about it is that our experiment 

 station has just analyzed it, and it has nitrogen and phosporus and 

 potash in just about the quantities that we have in oil meal. 



