No. 4.] SOIL FERTILITY. 145 



jVli-. Wm. H. Bowker (of Boston). I don't think I 

 should have projected myself into this discussion if the 

 manufacturers had not been pretty severely criticised by the 

 lecturer, as you have all heard. Apparently we are in a 

 tight place. We want to do what is right, and we ask the 

 doctors to tell us what to do, and they don't dare to tell us. 

 Even the good doctor here admits that he has not the courage 

 to tell the farmers what to do, — that he is not the man to 

 prescribe. Who, then, is? 



There are great manufacturers of proprietary medicines, 

 and the leading physicians of the country are prescribing 

 these medicines. Why? Because they are put up in a large 

 way on known definite formulas, which are printed on the 

 packages, and are manufactured from drugs of known purity 

 and strength ; and the doctors believe it is safer to prescribe 

 these things than to trust theh' prescriptions to the average 

 druggist. We are in the position of the men who are manu- 

 facturing these proprietary medicines, where the formulas or 

 analyses are known and printed on the package. 



You come to us and ask us to give you something with 

 which to grow a crop. We turn to the scientific man, — 

 the doctor, — and ask him, and he has no answer. What 

 do you think of the phvsician who tells you at your bedside 

 that quinine and iron are good tonics, and then leaves 3^ou 

 without giving you the form and the proportion? You 

 Avouldn't employ him longer, would you ? You require that 

 he shall prescribe for you a definite form and a definite 

 quantity. Each of you has his own peculiar characteristics, 

 but your physician prescribes, nevertheless, and his judg- 

 ment is based upon his experience and the experience of 

 others in his profession. 



Professor Stockbridge, who died a f(Mv months ago, said 

 that there were many things in the fertilizing of crops which 

 we did not know about, but which he hoped time would 

 solve. Nevertheless, he took the crop as his basis and said : 

 " We will sup})ly it as far as we know how Avitli what it 

 n'(|uir('s for an average ci'o}) under normal conditions in 

 properly balanced manures." That was a good starting 

 point. His crop formulas were modified by experiments, 

 by the teachings of such men as Johnson, Sturtevant and 



