6. Our farmers, as a rule, sell no grain to carry away phosphates. 

 They do sell hay, straw, vegetables and fruits, all of which contain 

 more potash than phosphoric acid. 



7. Many of our farmers are milk producers : they buy and feed 

 large quantities of wheat bran, cottonseed meal, gluten meal, oats, 

 etc. These foods are rich in i)hosphates and nitrogen, and conse- 

 quently the manures of home production are rich in these elements. 



REASONS WHY INQUIRY SEEMED CALLED FOR. 



1. On account of the well known variation in soils. 



2. Analyses of plants and agricultural products showed them, as 

 a rule, to contain much more potash than phosphoric acid ; while 

 the fertilizers in most cases contained the latter in much the larger 

 quantities. 



3. It is known that plants vary widely in respect to their ability 

 to gather food from the soil. One finds enough of a given element 

 where another fails to do so ; and this may be true even though the 

 latter contains less of the element in question than the former. It 

 did not appear that this factor, or what may be designated the feed- 

 ing capacity, of crops had been sufficiently taken into consideration 

 in compounding and selecting fertilizers for them. 



QUESTIONS PROPOSED. 



1. To what extent and in what way do the plant food require- 

 ments of ditfereut crops cultivated in rotation vary? 



2. Are the so-called complete ^'- special" fertilizers offered upon 

 our markets rationally compounded? 



3. Is the practice of our farmers in so frequently using phos- 

 phates alone wise, and calculated to insure the largest possible crops 

 at the least cost? 



RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 



With Corn: — This crop was grown upon the field reported upon 

 in detail, in 1889, 1890 and 1894. 



1. Potash applied in the form of muriate most largely increased 

 the crops both of grain and stover. It greatly exceeded either 

 nitrogen or phosphoric acid in its influence upon the crops. 



