INTRODUCTION. 15 



in a work of this kind methods of soil preparation and culture are of necessity 

 treated, to some extent, the chief aim of the book will be to make plain so far as 

 has been ascertained, the methods of supplying the manurial needs of crops, and 

 especially to endeavor to do something towards encouraging a more judicious use 

 of the commercial fertilizers than is common among farmers. Few northern 

 farmers fully realize to what extent the southern farmer has come to rely upon 

 commercial fertilizers for every crop he plants. And it is important that in the 

 interest that is now being taken in the Central West in the use of commercial 

 fertilizers, that the farmers be protected from making the mistakes that have 

 proved disastrous to the southern farmer, and that they should be taught in the 

 beginning of their use of these fertilizers, where and how they may be made 

 profitable, and how to avoid the dangers of soil wasting that have followed hard 

 upon the use of commercial fertilizers in the cotton states. The poorest farmers 

 and the best farmers use commercial fertilizers. The first-class dribbles them 

 in small quantity under his sale crop, solely for the purpose of getting a little 

 more to sell; the second class uses them in a far more liberal manner for the pur- 

 pose of building up the soil and the development of its natural capacity. The 

 first class of farmers simply use enough to add a little to what the land would do 

 unaided, and thus get what the soil would do and all that the fertilizer did, and 

 the result is that the soil is in a worse condition by reason of the application; and 

 it is no wonder that the men who use these forms of plant food in this way have 

 come to the conclusion that they are only stimulants. The greatest educational 

 influence of late years among farmers who have passed the years when they could 

 have attended a college, has been the Farmers' Institutes. When these Institutes 

 were first inaugaurated farmers as a class knew little about the chemistry of the 

 fertilizers they used, and regarded that the best which smelled the worst. Since 

 the Institutes and the Grange have been getting in their work there has been a 

 wonderful change in this respect, and the farmer who does not know something 

 about the chemical composition of the fertilizers he uses, and the nature of the 

 elements entering into them, is as rare as one who did know these things was 

 at one time. These educational influences have also brought about a change 

 in other respects. Farmers, as a class, have now a greater respect for what 

 they formerly ridiculed as "book farming," and today it is only the grossly 

 ignorant among the farmers who fail to realize what scientific study and investi- 

 gation have done for the farmer. Another educational influence that has been 

 brought to bear upon the farmer is the Agricultural Experiment Station. The 

 whole modern system of spraying for the prevention of fungous diseases in plants 

 and to ward off the attacks of noxious insects, has been brought about through 

 the work of the Experiment Stations, and on no subject of interest to the farmer 

 have the Stations devoted more attention than to the study of the various forms 

 of plant food sold as fertilizers, their composition and value. Before the 

 inauguration of these Stations the farmer was at the mercy of the compounder 

 of fertilizers, and had no means for ascertaining their real value. With the in- 

 auguration of the Experiment Stations and their analyses of these mixtures came 

 the passage of stricter laws regulating the sale of fertilizers and protecting not 

 only the farmer, but the honest fertilizer manufacturer, from the frauds that 

 were formerly so common. The result of all these influences is that farmers who 



