CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS. 125 



can mix tl:^m. Judge French has told us thai plants are com- 

 posed of certain elements from the soil, and has mentioned the 

 experiments of Liebig, Ville, and others, and the doctrines drawn 

 from these experiments are now well established. Mr. Wilder 

 said that he was a man of progress, and he feared that the paper, 

 if read superficially by the public, would lead them to believe that 

 the whole matter of the application of special fertilizers is a hum- 

 bug. The question is, whether these fertilizers are capable of 

 doing what Prof. Stockbridge asserts they will do. Dr. Sturtevant, 

 Dr. Burnett, and E. F. Bowditch, tested them last year, with favor- 

 able impressions, and though one swallow does not make a sum- 

 mer, 3'et if the fertilizers will effect only half as much as is claimed 

 for them they will be worth more than all the agricultural colleges 

 in the country have cost. 



Dr. E. L. Sturtevant said that all must have observed how a 

 stream that has been dammed rises gradually by retrogressions, the 

 wavelet at the bank being now higher than the flood, and now 

 lower, but the water continually deepening. So it is with the pro- 

 gress of human opinion ; now a wave of public excitement rises 

 into prominence at the apparent discovei-y of a truth, and then 

 retrogresses as an error is discovered ; yet new truths have been 

 added to the old, and the general progress has been advanced. It 

 is the advancing wave that fluctuates, but the larger water con- 

 tinually crowds towards the barriers. It is the advanced thinkers, 

 and the leaders of progress, who vibrate upon the borders of the 

 unknown, while the advance of the general public is steady. The 

 new truths, so called, are so mingled with errors, the necessities of 

 progress, that we must recognize in them the demands required by 

 progress, and overlook the minor variations brought about through 

 individual enthusiasm and one-sidedness. 



He deemed Prof. Stockbridge and his formulas no exception to 

 this general rule, and he expected to find in them both truth and 

 error. The errors may be harmless to the wise public ; the truths 

 ma}^ be of vast importance. He did not desire to criticise the 

 originality which he claimed, or the methods whereby he had 

 brought his formulas before the public. His standing as an inves- 

 tigator and as a man of science, if such he has, should be discussed 

 before another tribunal than this. What concerns us as farmers, is 

 the value for manuring our fields, of the formulas to which he has 

 given his name, and Dr. S. but mentioned his claims in order that 

 an opinion may be expressed upon their use in farm practice. 



