OTHEE AIDS TO FAEMING 167 



lay our hands upon, and so from an unbiased 

 standpoint have reached the following conclusions. 



Too many brands of commercial fertilizers con- 

 tain as their chief constituent a filler of no fertiliz- 

 ing value whatever. As an illustration, peat 

 taken from swamps is largely used as a filler. 

 Peat is simply rotten vegetation or organic matter 

 unmixed with soil minerals which has reached that 

 stage where it is dead organic matter. It is de- 

 void of bacterial life. It has been arrested in its 

 stages of decomposition before it was worked up 

 into humus. If the vegetation of which it is en- 

 tirely composed had been mixed with soil minerals 

 at the time or immediately after it was growing, 

 then it would have been a valuable soil constituent, 

 and a fertile soil would have been constructed. 



But being dead organic matter it has no fertiliz- 

 ing value when applied to other soils. If applied 

 in large quantities to soil it would have some value 

 as aiding in the conserving of moisture, but it would 

 of itself furnish no plant food. Soils consisting 

 of peat may grow one or two crops when first sub- 

 jected to cultivation, but attempting to grow crops 

 upon them afterwards is an expensive experiment, 

 as the author has found by personal experience. 

 They can be put through what the laymen of agri- 

 culture call a "taming process," by which they 

 eventually can be worked into fairly good soils. 

 This ' ' taming process ' ' is tramping them with live 

 stock, the application to them of rock phosphate, 

 potash, animal manures, and, strange as it may 

 seem, green manuring. We have known muck 

 soils to be greatly benefited with the growing and 

 plowing under of rye upon them. 



