1889.] PUBLIC DOCUJ^IENT — No. 4. 17 



livered. This tobacco crop, when packed, yielded over 

 twenty-five hundred pounds of fine tobacco per acre, and 

 the quality was such that it brought the highest price in the 

 market. 



This remarkable crop attracted considerable attention at 

 the time ; but most farmers gave the credit of growth to the 

 manure, with but little to the cotton-seed meal. But few 

 saw the great value of the meal as a fertilizer. It did not, 

 however, come into general use as a fertilizer, even in Hat- 

 field, until several years later. 



The value of cotton-seed meal as a fertilizer is now gener- 

 ally admitted by farmers, and its use is being more largely 

 increased from year to year, because it is found that the 

 plant food it contains costs less than in most other com- 

 mercial fertilizers on the market. Its most valuable con- 

 stituents are nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. Accord- 

 ing to reliable analyses, a ton of cotton-seed meal contains 

 about one hundred and forty pounds of nitrogen, which forms 

 the basis to estimate its value. If nitrogen is worth seven- 

 teen cents per pound, the ton is worth twenty-four dollars 

 for its nitrogen. It contains also about thirty pounds of 

 potash and thirty pounds of phosphoric acid, valuable 

 elements of plant food, which, together, are worth four dol- 

 lars more, making the total value about twenty-eight dollars 

 per ton. 



Pure cotton-hull ashes are a valuable fertilizer, containing 

 in their composition large percentages of potash and phos- 

 phoric acid. Their gi"eat value as a fertilizer has been known 

 but a short time to the generality of farmers. Even now 

 farmers have begun to lose confidence in them, because they 

 so often contain much worthless foreign matter in their com- 

 position. They contain from twelve to thirty-two per cent 

 of potash, according to the condition in which the material 

 appears as an article in the fertilizer trade. They also con- 

 tain a large percentage of phosphoric acid. They have proved 

 to be a valuable fertilizer for grass, grain, and all kinds of 

 cultivated crops and fruits. 



Pure sulphate of potash contains fifty-four parts of potash 

 and forty-six parts of sulphuric acid. High-grade sulphate 

 of potash is gaining in popular favor among tobacco growers, 



