VALUE OF POTASH AXD PHOSPHORIC ACID IX CEOPS, ETC. 465 



None need to be reiuinded that this practice has been repeatedly 

 urged upon the farmer, and, indeed, thousands of practical illustra- 

 tions abound proving that i^rofitable agriculture and productive lands 

 are closely connected with flucks and herds. 



But if our present methods shall continue, and our exportation of 

 cereals increase, the time must come, unless our experience is to be 

 Avholly unlike that of other countries, when, to increase the produc- 

 tion of our lands we must at last have recourse to the same methods 

 which have long obtained in great Britain and upon the Continent, 

 and in the New England, Middle, and Atlantic States of our own 

 country, viz., the application to our soils of those mineral constituents 

 which now are being so rapidly removed. When that time comes, as 

 come it assuredly must without some modification of our methods, it 

 will be found that the pi-ofitable producti(m of the cereal crops at the 

 prices we now obtain for them will be an impossibility. Indeed, al- 

 ready in many parts of the country the continued production of corn, 

 as in the past, is found to be almost without profit, and there have 

 sprung u}) many factories hoping by its manufacture into other pro- 

 ducts to increase the profits in its production. 



The manufacture and sale of commercial fertilizers has rapidlv de- 

 veloped during the past few years in our country, and already reaches 

 an annual aggregate of many millions of dollars. 



In Great Britain, there was imported in a single year 394,843 tons 

 of fertilizing materials, Avorth 820,049,042. Every corner of the earth 

 and island of the sea has been ransacked, almost, to supply her with 

 the means for increasing her crops. Within five years from the time 

 when Liebig called attention to the deposits of guano, her importation 

 of this most valuable fertilizer reached the enormous amount of 283,300 

 tons in a single year, and her consumption of superphosphate is esti- 

 mated annually at 250,000 tons. 



But, in addition to this, her importations of cereals and breadstufFs 

 for consumption w'ithin her borders has added greatly to the aggregate 

 supply of her material for the enrichment of her farming lands. As 

 a result of this enrichment of the soil, we have seen the productiveness 

 of these farming lands of Great Britain, within the past thirty years, 

 enormously increased, until it appears, according to the authority of 

 one of their foremost agriculturists, they have reached about the last 

 limit of profitable production in their agriculture. 



In connection with this subject of commercial fertilizers, it is inter- 

 esting to consider the results which have followed the chemical control 

 which has been maintained over this great industry. xVll will under- 

 .^0 * 



