20 BOAED OF AGRICULTUKE. [Jan. 



The experience of the year has clearly demonstrated the 

 usefulness of commercial fertilizers in forcing the early 

 maturity of corn and other cultivated crops, which have 

 brought higher prices in the markets and the early conver- 

 sion of crop products into cash. 



It is the intelligent, wide-awake farmer, who observes 

 these conditions of success and takes advantage of them 

 that can show the most satisfactory balance sheet at the end 

 of the year. 



The investigations carried on at the experiment station in 

 Amherst are invaluable to practical farmers of Massachusetts. 

 The analyses of fertilizer materials and fertilizer compounds, 

 continually going on, furnish to our farmers reliable infor- 

 mation as to their composition of plant food and compara- 

 tive value. We have also at hand the investigations of 

 eminent scientists of the old world, who were earlier in the 

 field (giving the ash composition of meadow hay and grasses, 

 clover and fodder plants, root crops, their leaves and stems, 

 refuse and manufactured products, sti'aw, chaff, textile plants, 

 litter, grains and seeds of agricultural plants, fruits and 

 seeds of trees, leaves, wood and bark). 



This important work has revealed some of the hidden 

 secrets of nature, creating a new departure, by pointing out 

 the way to a more economical production of farm crops. 

 These important analyses have formed a basis of positive 

 knowledge in this country since the year 1868, and have 

 stimulated subsequent experiments in the formation of fer- 

 tilizer compounds for special crops, suggesting the idea of 

 supplying to the soil the elements of plant food corresponding 

 in quantity and kind to the constituents found in the plant. 



This principle has been applied by farmers in Massachu- 

 setts and Connecticut, for a period of about ten years, in the 

 production of tobacco. The results have been very satisfac- 

 tory, not only in the growth of fine crops which have 

 brought the highest prices in market, but in reducing the 

 cost of production to a paying basis, making a large saving 

 over the old way of hauling large quantities of expensive 

 animal manures from the railroad station to the tobacco field. 

 Many farmers in Hatfield have been successful in the pro- 

 duction of excellent crops of com, potatoes, hay and grain 



