100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



merchant, and the demand for his goods. It is regulated, just 

 as every other market value is regulated, by supply and demand. 

 The farmer cannot afford to pay twenty dollars a hundred for 

 manure, when he can buy it for five dollars, or a little less, as 

 he can now. He can only afford to pay the lowest price at 

 which he can get the article, no matter what its value is upon 

 his land. In this way, we must distinguish accurately between 

 the agricultural value of all manures. At present, the manure 

 market of the whole civilized world is regulated by the Peruvian 

 government. Through her agents, she sells her inestimable 

 guano in every market of America and Europe, at the same 

 price. The price here has been for years sixty dollars a ton, 

 and it has been the same price the world over. The price is 

 now sixty-two dollars and fifty cents, in gold. We pay pre- 

 cisely the same that other people pay, everywhere else, and 

 this regulates values very accurately. This guano does not vary 

 greatly in quality, and at the price asked even the poorest 

 qualities are worth the money. 



This is the cheapest available market source of ammonia. 

 Occasionally crude ammonia salts or nitrates may be bought 

 cheaper ; but the price of guano does not vary, and it has and 

 will rule the market and establish the standard. Bones and the 

 phosphatic guanos furnish the bulk of the phosphates. The 

 price varies according to the abundance of the supply, but not 

 greatly. Still the phosphates have steadily increased in price 

 in this country for some time — due, in a great measure, to the 

 demand for shipment to Europe, and to the greatly increased 

 use made of them among our own farmers. 



The increase in the use of bones among farmers, as stated by 

 Dr. Voelcker, already quoted, indicates very clearly the progress 

 in agriculture, or the progress of the exhaustion of the soil of 

 its manurial constituents — and that is very much the same thing. 

 The farmer who has the ability quickly to exhaust his soil of its 

 ash constituents — the constituents of available plant-food — and 

 obtain them in his crops, is a better farmer than he who cannot 

 do it. The better our appliances and facilities for thorough til- 

 lage, the better are we able to convert the available plant-food 

 into salable crops. We are led, then, to the necessity of con- 

 sidering closely the standard whereby farmers may judge 

 whether they pay more or less than the manure is worth, and 



