334 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



represented. Mr. Chamberlain showed some ex- 

 cellent Silesians. 



There -were some very large "Cheshire" hogs 

 which attracted notice, and one monstrous York- 

 shire that was the "observed of all observers." 

 He weighed eight hundred pounds ! There were 

 a few good Sussex and Essex pigs; but on the 

 whole the show was not equal to that of last year. 

 The show of poultry was excellent. 



Of implements and machines there was a good 

 display, but we have not time this month to par- 

 ticularize. 



The fruits and flowers constituted, as usual, one 

 of the attractive features of the Fair. The ar- 

 rangement of Floral Hall, under the direction of 

 Mr. James Vice, was much and justly admired. 

 The display of fruits has never been excelled. 



The attendance at the evening meetings was 

 large, and the discussions interesting and instruc- 

 tive. We give a report of them on another page. 



MAPES AND HIS MANURES. 



The Working Farmer for September contains an 

 article from the pen of Mr. J. J. Mapes headed 

 "Facts Concerning Mapes' Phosphates," in which 

 Profs. S. W. Johnson and Portee, of Yale Col- 

 lege, Dr. Evan Pugh, President of the Penn- 

 sylvania Agricultural College, Messrs. Luther 

 Tucker & Son, of the Country Gentleman, Mr. 

 Sanfoed Howard, of the Boston Cultivator, Mr. 

 A. P. Cumings, of the New York Observer, and 

 Joseph Harris, of the Genesee Farmer, are accused 

 of a concerted effort to injure the sale of the arti- 

 ficial manures manufactured by the said Mapes. 



It is true that all the parties named have en- 

 deavored to convince their readers that Mapes' 

 manures are very inferior articles, but there has 

 been no " concerted action," and none of them, so 

 far as we know, have ever done him injustice. 

 True, they have said things that are not favorable 

 to him or his manures ; but he, and not they, is to 

 blame for that. So far as the writer is concerned, 

 if Mr. Mapes thinks we have done him injustice, 

 and will state it in reasonably few words, we shall 

 be happy to lay what he has to say before our 

 readers. 



Our first allusion to his manures was in the 

 Genesee Farmer for September, 1852, page 269. A 

 gentleman in New York sent us a sample of 

 "Mapes' Improved Superphosphate of Lime," and 

 we simply said that it was a poorly manufactured 

 article — that it looked as though the animal char- 

 coal from which it was made had not been ground 



previous to the addition of the sulphuric acid. We 

 had had far more experience in the manufacture of 

 superphosphate than Mr. Mapes, and knew that it 

 was impossible to make a good article without 

 grinding the animal charcoal or calcined bones. 

 Our remarks were not unfriendly. It was simply 

 a statement of a fact which Mr. Mapes, or any 

 other manufacturer, might have profited by. We 

 were personally unacquainted with Mr. M., and had 

 not the slightest thought of saying anything to in- 

 jure his feelings, his reputation or his business. 



Our next allusion to his manure was to copy the 

 result of an analysis of it made by Dr. Antisell, 

 and to say if this analysis was correct the manure 

 was not worth half what was charged for it. This 

 was in the Genesee Farmer for December, 1852, 

 page 367. Mapes replied to this by saying that 

 the manure analyzed by Dr. Antisell was not a 

 fair sample of his superphosphate. 



In an article written for the Country Gentleman 

 of March 3, 1853, Prof. S. W. Johnson gave the 

 result of a careful analysis of Mapes' manure. We 

 copied the article into the Genesee Farmer for 

 April, 1853. Mr. Mapes savagely attacked Prof. 

 Johnson for making and publishing this analysis. 

 He declared it erroneous on the face of it. The 

 ground of his charge was this: Prof. Johnson 

 found in Mapes' superphosphate some undecom- 

 posed phosphate of lime, and also some free sul- 

 phuric acid. This Mr. Mapes pronounced a 

 " chemical impossibility." The object of Mr. 

 Mapes, of course, was to show that if Prof. John- 

 son had made one mistake he might have made 

 others, and that therefore the analysis was un- 

 reliable. 



In the mean time Prof. Johnson had gone to 

 Europe, and as he was not here to vindicate him- 

 self, even had he thought it worth while, Ave stated 

 in the Genesee Farmer for September, 1853, page 

 281, that if Mapes' manure was made from un- 

 ground animal charcoal, it was not only quite pos- 

 sible, but also highly probable, for it to contain 

 undecomposed phosphate and free sulphuric acid — 

 from the fact that the acid could not get at the 

 phosphate in the hard lumps of the burnt bones. 

 Dr. Antisell's previous analysis showed that not 

 half the animal charcoal had been acted on by the 

 sulphuric acid. 



In October, 1853, we were on a visit to Prof. 

 Ward, of Newark, N. J., who resides near Mapes' 

 factory. His son asked us if we would like to 

 go over it. We assented, and he kindly went with 

 us to the factory. We there found from conversa- 



