CHEMICAL TEST OF MANURES. 103 



cents a pound for ammonia, (perhaps I might say twenty-five 

 cents a pound,) five or six cents a pound for phosphoric acid, 

 fourteen or sixteen cents a pound for soluble phosphoric acid, 

 and five cents a pound for potash, are very fair values for these 

 different ingredients. Now, if we bring Peruvian guano to this 

 test, calculating by percentages exactly the amount that it is 

 worth, we shall find that the price will a little overrun, if any- 

 thing, the actual price asked in the market now, which is about 

 $90, in currency, per ton of 2,000 pounds. Applying the same 

 scale to almost any commercial fertilizer in the market — to the 

 manipulated fertilizers especially, the superphosphates, manip- 

 ulated guanos, &c., — I think they will be found considerably 

 below. Still, for some purposes, they are useful at the prices 

 at which they are sold, and they will continue to be bought. 

 But the price should be as nearly as possible what the farmer 

 can get an equivalent for, and, with the almost unlimited sup- 

 ply of guano, he must study carefully before he invests largely 

 in those manures which will supply phosphates in a more soluble 

 form than the guano, and which, from their mechanical condi- 

 tion and solubility, perhaps, are a little more valuable for certain 

 crops. 



A chemical analysis by a competent chemist is rather costly. 

 If a man is about to purchase a ton or two of manure, he can 

 hardly afford to pay twenty-five dollars to have an analysis made 

 for himself. He cannot trust the analysis made by the vendor 

 — that is certain. He ought, then, to be able to turn for his 

 information to his agricultural society, to the board of agricul- 

 ture in the State, or to some disinterested body, of which he 

 himself should be a member, perhaps, or in which he should be 

 sufficiently interested to pay in his just share of the expenses, 

 for the information which he much needs. It is, however, for 

 the interest of every State that their farmers should have this 

 information — that their markets should be narrowly watched, 

 so that the vendors of these fraudulent manures, or manures 

 sold at very much more than their real value, shall not dare to 

 put such manures into the market. 



Referring again to these analyses which were made in Con- 

 necticut a few years ago, and in which, at the time, I was in- 

 terested, the effects seen there were very remarkable. Having 

 collected a number of the manures which were at that time 



