No. 4.] CHEMICAL AND FARM MANURES. 131 



THE COMPOSITION AND ECONOMICAL USE OF COM- 

 MERCIAL FERTILIZERS. 



BY DR. H. J. WHEELER, KINGSTON, R. I. 



In these days of returning commercial and industrial 

 prosperity, when the bulls and bears in the world's markets 

 are wholly absorbed in their own mad rush for financial 

 supremacy, and when the revival of business causes the 

 commercial and manufacturing classes, glorying in the re- 

 newed independence arising from continual and remunera- 

 tive employment, to forget that even their very existence is 

 dependent upon the soil, and that the farmer is the back- 

 bone of the nation, it is more than ever fitting and necessary 

 that far-sighted guardians of the nation's interests should 

 foster agriculture, since it rests as the foundation of every 

 other calling and profession of man. Yours is then a noble 

 work, and whatever you do as a Board toward furthering 

 agricultural education, whether through your Agricultural 

 College, 3^our experiment station or through your public 

 meetings and farmers' institutes, must prove eventually a 

 blessing to every resident, not only of your Commonwealth 

 but of the nation. We must not forget that branch of agri- 

 culture represented by our great dairy and other animal 

 industries ; but underlying this is the primary question of 

 the economical production of plants, involving as its funda- 

 mental feature the inseparable study of soils and manures. 

 It is therefore a particular pleasure and with an appreciation 

 of the high honor, borne out by the importance of the sub- 

 ject, to agriculture and to mankind, that I come before you 

 to-day to speak upon the question under consideration. 



In treating of the economical use of commercial fertilizers 

 in the light of our present knowledge, one can hardly limit 

 the discussion to potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen, the 



