CHAPTEK XL. 

 SOME STATION INVESTIGATIONS IN FERTILIZERS. 



In a bulletin published in 1893 the Ohio Station, from a series of four 

 years experiments, concludes: "While, therefore, these experiments demon- 

 strate the possibility of producing a regular and certain increase in the yield 

 of cereal crops by the use of a complete chemical fertilizer, yet they show 

 that if such fertilizers are to be used in Ohio in the production of cereal 

 crops with any prospect of profit and as a part of a regular system of agri- 

 culture, that system must provide for the accumulation in the soil of the 

 largest possible quantity of organic nitrogen, through the culture, in short 

 rotations, of plants which have the power of obtaining nitrogen from sources 

 inaccessible to the cereals." 



The following year the same Station made the following additional 

 statement : "At the present prices of cereal crops and of fertilizing materials 

 respectively the profitable production of corn, wheat and oats upon chemical 

 or commercial fertilizers, or upon barnyard manure, if its cost be proportion- 

 ate to that of the chemical constituents of fertility found in commercial 

 fertilizers, is a hopeless undertaking, unless these crops be grown in a sys- 

 tematic rotation with clover or a similar nitrogen-storing crop; and the 

 poorer the soil in natural fertility the smaller the probability of profitable 

 crop production by means of artificial fertilizers." 



All of which makes more emphatic what we have said in regard to the 

 need for the renovation of the soil and the storing of it with humus, through 

 the growing of cow peas or clover, thus making it not only richer in the 

 nitrogenous matters, hut making it more retentive of moisture for the proper 

 dissolving of the chemicals applied. The richer the soil in humus the more 

 lavish may the application of fertilizers be made with profit. And yet all 

 over the South there are thousands of farmers dribbling a little fertilizer 

 on soil almost barren, for the purpose of growing a little more cotton without 

 ever inquiring whether or not the increase in the crop pa}^s for the fertilizer. 



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