1917] AGRICULTURE IN WAR-TIME. 223 
present, but there should be a reasonable expectation that with a favour- 
able season there will be a profitable return. . 
Fertilizers are materials that furnish in more or less available forms 
one or more of the three so-called essential elements of fertility—nitrogen, 
phosphoric acid and potash. A fertilizer that supplies all three is known 
as a “complete” fertilizer. They may be chemical compounds, as 
nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, etc., or they may be of organic 
origin, such as bone meal, guano, dried blood, tankage, fish scrap, etc. 
Frequently the compounded fertilizer as manufactured and sold under 
brand or trade name is made up of or is a mixture of both classes of 
materials. The Fertilizer Act compels the manufacturers to brand all 
this class of goods with the percentages of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 
potash contained and also stipulates that the amount of available 
phosphoric acid should be stated. 
Due largely to advertising and the activity of fertilizer agents, but 
also in part to the ignorance of our farmers respecting the nature of the 
several constituents or ingredients of fertilizers and the fact that these 
ingredients cannot at all times be readily obtained, the habit in this 
country has been to purchase the manufactured, compounded fertilizers, 
the price of which is usually from 15 to 40 per cent. above the cost of the 
ingredients. 
Our campaign in this connection has therefore been one primarily 
of education; the instruction of the farmer regarding the functions of the 
several fertilizing elements in the vegetable economy, the special require- 
ments of the several crops and the deficiencies likely to characterize 
different types of soil. Then we have pointed out the economy of 
purchasing the ingredients rather than the compounded fertilizer and 
given simple methods of home mixing and application. To tell all 
this in detail would be quite impossible to-night, I shall therefore merely 
bring before you as concisely as possible some of the more important 
deductions from our investigational work with fertilizers, since these 
deductions have been given out as a working guide for those employing 
these aids to increase crop production. 
First, we teach that fertilizers have a legitimate, rightful place in a 
rational system of farming but that profit from their use seldom results 
if that place is not clearly understood. It seems to us important that 
the farmers, at the outset, should know our attitude towards fertilizers, 
for their are many views abroad in the country respecting them. There 
are those of the old school still in the land who consider fertilizers to be in 
the same class with quack medicines, that they act merely as stimulants, 
as a whip to a tired horse, and that no real benefit or profit results froni 
their use. The number of these persons is happily on the decrease. 
