PROFITABLE FARMING. 25 



tion as to mixing a fertiliser on the farm, and 

 procured the materials in proper pro- 

 portions, now comes the actual pro- 

 cess. From the usual instructions it 

 appears such a simple matter. 

 Empty out the materials from the bags, turn 

 them over thoroughly three or four times, 

 crush any (?) lumps, mix, put through a half- 

 inch mesh sieve or screen, and, after all this 

 labour for it is labour, and we speak from 

 actual experience what is the result ? A 

 coarse-grained, unsatisfactory mixture, which 

 spreads badly, giving too much nitrogen in 

 one place, and too little in another, and the 

 same with both phosphates and potash, the 

 resulting crop being irregular and patchy. A 

 properly manufactured complete fertiliser has 

 many more times the covering power, 

 because it is in a fine-grained homo- Greater 

 geneous powder, the result of the overmB 

 grinding it gets by the powerful [*,, 

 machinery of the factory, so that crops, 

 it may pass through a sieve of one- 

 eighth inch mesh, not one of one-half inch mesh. 

 Of a large number of samples of compound 

 fertilisers selected at random from factories all 

 over the United Kingdom, 95.50 per cent, of 

 the material passed through a one-eighth inch 

 mesh sieve. 



Just consider what this means in grains of fer- 

 tiliser per acre when a half-inch mesh equals 

 5,184 holes per square yard, whereas one-eighth 

 inch mesh equals no less than 82,944 holes per 



