388 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
of muscle forming nutrients, 163 pounds of heat and fat forming 
material consisting of 15.9 pounds of sugarand .4 pounds of pure 
fat; there are also .3 pounds of bone forming elements. te 
Actual human experiments have shown that in order to keep the _ of 
body in good working condition, the man at only moderate labor __ + 
must consume .20, or one-quarter, pound of muscle forming food, o 
.25, or one-quarter, pound of pure fat, and one pound of starches or mi 
sugars per day. It can thus be easily seen that a bushel of apples si 3 
would furnish only one-half enough muscle forming food, just + 
enough fat and ten times more starches or heat producing food 3 
than the human body requires in one day. : 
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> 
-It can not be doubted that the average person realizes that fruit 
alone is not a proper diet, yet nothing but a chemical analysis 
will show to a nicety the wide ratio between the muscle and fat 
forming constituents. Still, when.combined with moreconcentrated = 
foods, fruits are one of the most valuable class of foods which we d 
have. Leaving out of account the actual food value of fruits, the 
acid they contain appears to tone up the system, and the bulkiness 
of fruits give to the digestive organs their proper irritation and rae 
thus keep them ina healthy state of action. When this is the con- ; 
dition, the system becomes a regular death trap to germs and 
microbes, and in this age of contagious diseases this is a matter of 
no small consideration. 
Fertilizers.—In the use of fertilizers, chemistry has not been of so 
much value to the Minnesota fruit grower as it has to those in the 
eastern and middle states. As we have it here, the horticulturist 
must be careful to use the barnyard manure on the plants which 
demand more nitrogen than others, and wood ashes on those need- 
ing potash. In the older states it is vastly different. There the 
farms are small, the land in a low state of fertility, and barnyard 
manure and wood ashes at a premium. Commercial fertilizers 
must be resorted to and already are used in the United States to the 
extent of fifty millions of dollars annually. Perhaps at this point 
chemistry has proven of the greatest value to the fruit grower, the 
market gardener and the florist, inasmuch as a chemical analysis 
shows just which of the many fertilizers on the market is the 
cheapest and most profitable to purchase. For example, we will 
suppose that dried blood is selling on the Minneapolis market for 
$20.00 per ton and nitrate of soda on the same market is worth $60.00 
per ton. The question is, “which is the cheaper to purchase?” 
We simply refer to the table of the chemical composition of com- = 
mercial fertilizers and find the following: Dried blood contains 
10.52 per cent nitrogen and 1.91 per cent phosphoric acid, while 
nitrate of soda contains 15.7 percent nitrogen and no phosphoric 
acid. It can be seen at a glance which is the cheaper, but to be 
accurate we will figure out the cost per pound of valuable fertilizing 
materials. Two thousand pounds of dried blood containing 10.52 - 
per cent nitrogen and 1.91 per cent phosphoric acid will give 210 
pounds of nitrogen and 38 pounds of phosphoric acid, ora total of 248 
pounds of the more valuable fertilizing constituents. In the case 
of the nitrate of soda, 2,000 pounds containing 15.7 per cent nitrogen 
will give a total of 314 pounds of the most valuable plant food. 
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oS dallas 
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