FERTILIZPJKS. 69 



Benjamin P. Ware understood that Dr. Sturtevant had expressed 

 the opinion that it would be profitable to sell barn3-ard manure and 

 purchase chemical fertilizers, and asked whether he was still of that 

 opinion. 



Dr. Sturtevant replied that it was but a question of price. When 

 the price of dung is relatively' higher than that of fertilizer, then he 

 was ready to sell. At the present time he would sell dung at eight 

 dollars a cord, for this was more than its chemical value, and he 

 could secure lai'ger returns in crops from the eight dollars invested 

 in fertilizer than from the cord of dung. 



At the present time, Stockbridge's idea is undergoing trial, and 

 the experience of several 3-ears has been confirmatory of its real 

 value. The speaker coutd say, and would say, that the Stock- 

 bridge fornmla offered a substitute for dung which enabled him to 

 cultivate all the land he pleased, and which, at present prices of 

 fertilizer and product, left a handsome margin of profit. The 

 Stockbridge formula was certainl}^ a more philosophical method of 

 obtaining results than the Ville formula, as being based on the 

 wants of the plant, in preference to being based on the accidental 

 product, dung. 



In .the national characteristics of the Germans, we recognize a 

 thoroughness of agricultural thought which is commendable, but in 

 agriculture the Germans show little power of generalization. In 

 England, the farmers have been taught empirically, through 

 experience, the value of artificial fertihzers, and, as a consequence, 

 there is more of fertilizing material imported into that country than 

 into an}' other portion of the world of the same area. The Ameri- 

 can farmer — the intelligent one — is more of a scientific farmer 

 than the English farmer, and endeavors to use the results of 

 investigation as generalized to meet his case ; and hence new ideas 

 of fertilization find an extended welcome, and receive more careful 

 and unprejudiced trial than elsewhere. 



In response to a question, Dr. Sturtevant stated that Messrs. 

 Prout and Middlemarch, of England, had farmed extensively', using 

 fertilizers as directed by Dr. Voelcker, and the results were unques- 

 tionably successful. 



He added that fertilizer experiments are often x-itiated by the 

 failure to consider the importance of seed, and, as an illustration, 

 that if we have two seed corns, one of the normal productiveness 

 of thirty bushels per acre, and another of sixty bushels, and plant 



