SPECIAL FERTILIZERS FOR PARTICULAR PLA^^TS. 21 



beets, etc., etc. He even invaded Flora's realm, and de- 

 clared that his nostrum for Eoses was a specific for any 

 languid capers of this sometimes rather coquettish queen 

 of flowers. His own arguments, which were rather 

 plausible and glibly uttered, were backed up by numer- 

 ous certificates — authentic, I have no doubt — where nis 

 *' potato fertilizer'' had worked wonders with some, 

 with others his ^'corn manure" had been of undoubted 

 benefit, and so on all through the list. 



Now, I have no reason to say that the vender of these 

 fertilizers was a quack, except the broad fact, gathered 

 from an experience of nearly forty years, that has shown 

 me that it makes but little difference with what fertilizer 

 a crop is treated, provided the soil is properly pulverized 

 and the fertilizer applied in proper proportions according 

 to its strength. Had all his separate kinds of fertilizers 

 been taken from the same bag (provided that bag con- 

 tained a good article of bone dust or guano), the result 

 to his patrons would have been the same, whether he had 

 used it on one or all of the crops that he had special pre- 

 scriptions for. 



There are few market gardeners in the vicinity of New 

 York who have not, at one time or another, been obliged 

 to take anything they could get for fertilizing purposes, 

 and the difference has never been specially perceptible 

 when manure from horse stables or cow stables have 

 been applied, or when $100 per acre have been expended 

 for bone dust or Peruvian guano, and these all used 

 on a dozen different crops without any discrimination. 

 Agricultural chemistry may be all very well in some 

 respects, but if it gets down to such hair-splitting 

 niceties as analyzing scores of special plants, and telling 

 us that we must feed each with only just such food as 

 the analysis shows it to be composed of, then our common 

 sense, born of practical experience, must scout and ridi- 

 cule such nonsense. 



