217 



slop to ask this <juestioii and to attempt to answer it — why 

 is it? 



As bearing on the same point, I want to call your at- 

 tention to the fact that farmers in Connecticut, on Long 

 Island, in Southern New Jersey, in Maryland or in Virginia 

 are producing very much larger crops of all sorts on their 

 sandy soils with a plant food capital which is half as large 

 as that contained in the heavier soils of Central New Jersey 

 or New York or Pennsylvania or Maryland. A brother of 

 mine who is farming in South Jersey raises 80 bushels of 

 shelled com per acre on land that contains just undergone 

 tenth of one per cent, of nitrogen, about .08% of phosphoric 

 acid and a little under 1% of total potash. At New Bruns- 

 wick the soil contains a little over .02% of nitrogen, more 

 than twice as much; it contains .16% of phosphoric acid, 

 twice as much, it contains over 2% of potash, more than 

 twice as much, and we think we are doing well when we 

 grow 50 or 60 bushels of shelled corn per acre. 



It is not only the amount of plant food capital in the 

 soil, but the rate of circulation of that plant food capital in 

 the soil, and that applies as well to the growing of fruit 

 trees as it does to the growing of any other crop, but we are 

 f:pt to overlook it and we are apt to overlook, moreover, 

 that some kinds of plant food circulate in the soil a great 

 deal more readily than other kinds. We forget that phos- 

 phoric acid does not circulate in the soil as readily as does 

 jiitrogen or potash; perhaps that is the reason why we do 

 rot follow in making up fertilizer formulas, the analyses of 

 crops indicating a certain relation of nitrogen to phos])horif 

 acid and potash. 



The late Mr. Bowker. who was one of the pioneers, as- 

 you know, in the fertilizer industry, used to tell how. in the 

 early Stockbridge Fertilizers, the formulas were made up 

 en the basis of the composition of the crop substance, and 

 })hosphoric acid was not used in as large amounts in i)ro- 

 portion as it is now% just l)ecause the analyses indicated that 

 the plant does not need as much phosphoric acid as of other 



