FERTILIZERS. 61 



•with great profit. Some soils give but little return for manures 

 applied ; others respond bountifull_y to even small applications. 

 Such, the Geimans very aptly term " thankful" soils. This is one. 

 Left to itself it seems to be able to do very little, but with a very 

 little help it brings good crops. On the supposition that the single 

 plots without manure were fair samples of the whole, notwithstand- 

 ing the large quantities used and the high prices allowed, the nitro- 

 genous superphosphates gave, with potatoes and turnips, a gain of 

 from $50 to $80 per acre. But while the fertilizers brought such 

 profitable returns of potatoes and roots, with beans there was 

 almost uniforml}' a loss. This accords well with what Mr. Lawes, 

 of England, says as the result of thirty 3'ears' experimenting and 

 practice with fertihzers, that "it is not advisable to sow artificial 

 manure with beans, peas, tares, or other leguminous plants. Corn, 

 i. e., grain, and root crops, will take all the artificial manure which 

 the farmer can afford to pa^^ for." 



Prof. Atwater said that he did not feel justified in making many 

 generalizations from these experiments, though future experience 

 might warrant more. One or two points were, however, worthy of 

 mention. The cases in which nitrogen, in the form of dried blood, 

 by itself, appeared, in the reports, to be especiall}' beneficial to 

 corn, were very few — not more than one in ten. He did not think 

 this could all be due to the wrong application or excessive quantity of 

 the dried blood used . Doubtless, if the nitrogen had been in the form 

 of sulphate of ammonia, or nitrate of soda, or Peruvian guano, the 

 results would have been very dirt'erent. Still, it looked as though 

 the corn crop did not require the application of very large quanti- 

 ties of niti'ogen in fertilizers. 



Superphosphates proved beneficial in nearly ever^- case where the 

 trial was a fair one. At the same time there are numerous well- 

 attested cases of worn-out soils in which phosphoric acid was evi- 

 dentl}' not needed. 



As regards potash, out of twelve cases in which farmers in the 

 vicinity of Middletown had reported their experience last season in 

 these experiments and in their field practice, potash salts were 

 apparently profitable in ten, and without benefit in two. Elsewhere, 

 the reports average less favorably for potash salts. 



These experiments illustrate how crops vary as to their feeding- 

 capacity ; how soils also jnay var}', and that these two factors must 

 be taken into account. The whole matter may be summed up into 



