30 



on jigriculture and chemistry : " Shall we say ammonia or nitrogen, phosphoric 

 acid or phosphorus, potash or potassium?" 



Your committee held a meeting in March, 1904, in New York, at which various 

 matters were under consideration, and at tliat time it was deemed by the com- 

 mittee inadvisable, in view of the fact that a large number of the States had 

 passed laws using the terms phosphoric acid and potash, to go back and undo all 

 that work and change to potassium and phosphorus. 



C. G. Hopkins, of Illinois. This matter of the terms to be used In connection 

 with fertilizers, as well as in stating analyses of other matters, as soils and ash, 

 is now also being considered by the Association of Official Agricultural Chem- 

 ists, having been taken up by that association at the St. Louis meeting. A com- 

 mittee has been appointed by that association to consider the entire question of 

 nomenclature of such materials as require chemical analysis and statement of 

 the con.stituents found, and I should be sorry to see final action taken by this 

 association at this time. It seems to me it would be well to appoint a com- 

 mittee to act jointly with the committee from that association to bring in a 

 joint report at our next annual meeting, rather than to take any final action at 

 this time. I think our first duty as an association is to the American fanner. 

 The thing which will ultimately be of the greatest benefit to the American 

 agriculturist is the thing we should do. I realize we have considerable litera- 

 ture pertaining to soils and fertilizers in America, and that we have quite a 

 diversified system of naming the three principal constituents of fertilizers. In 

 the literature in perhaps one-third of the States they say ammonia, and in 

 two-thirds of the States they now say nitrogen, under State laws. In nearly 

 all the State literature we see phosphoric acid when phosphorus pentoxid is 

 meant, although in any of the other sciences — such as pharmacy and medicine — 

 when they say phosphoric acid they mean that. The literature which comes 

 from the U. S. Department of Agriculture says potassium, and not potash, and 

 it says PO4 instead of P:.05, so there is by no means perfect harmony in the 

 conditions we now have. It has seemed to me the longer I have studied the 

 question of soils and fertilizers the more necessary it is that we simplify this 

 unnecessarily complicated situation. I suppose many of you have tried to 

 explain to the practical common-sense farmer why it is we pay for potash (K:.0) 

 when we buy potassium as chlorid (KCl). That is, we value potassium chlorid 

 on the basis of potassium oxid, although there is no potassium oxld in potassium 

 chlorid. In my own experience I have found that the situation becomes 

 ridi'-ulous to the common-sense farmer, and scientists are responsible for it. 

 ^Ye )>ersist because it would require a little extra clerical work to go over our 

 records and make some changes. Surely we must do the thing which Is sim- 

 plest for the practical man. American agriculture is going to advance as the 

 farmer understands the business. 



H. J. \Yheeler. I wish to say that the committee is in most hearty accord 

 with Doctor Hopkins in his idea of simplifying matters. But this association 

 and the association of chemists made certain reconmiendatons a number of 

 years ago and both hixxe been working hand in hand to secure the adoption 

 of laws in the various States in accordance with a certain line of uniformity, 

 and many of the States of the Union have already, after long effort, been 

 persuaded to change their laws in accordance with those recommendations. 

 To make any change to-day would mean to undo all we have done in the last 

 eight or ten years. It is quite another proposition to take up the matter of 

 nomenclature in regard to ordinary station work. I therefore move that the 

 matter of the nomenclature used in the reporting of experiment station \Aork 

 be referred to the section on experiment station work for their consideration. 



The motion was carried. (See p. 117.) 



