108 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



an art as agriculture ; and because I know that, if knowledge 

 can be made to pay anywhere, it is where such a great variety 

 of material can be turned into money as can be on the farm and 

 in the garden. 



Now, this matter of commercial fertilizers rests chiefly upon 

 certain mineral products — things which have been prepared by 

 the Creator in ages past, and which are to be collected and con- 

 verted into plant-food ; and I am one of those who believe that 

 all tliis talk about " progressed phosphates," &c., is nonsense. 

 I believe that mineral phosphates, taken by the chemist and put 

 into solution, or put into the form of soluble superphospliatcs, 

 are just as good as a phosphate that has been forty times 

 through the laboratory of life ; and I do not believe that we 

 know yet that there is any phosphate in the earth that has not 

 been " progressed." Prof. Agassiz can tell better than I can 

 about that. But the fact is, what we want in regard to phos- 

 phorus and phosphoric acid is enough of the phosphate. 



Now, I am one of those who believe that the treasures which 

 are necessary for man in his highest development, in his highest 

 degree of civilization, when the earth is populated more densely 

 than it is anywhere to-day — I believe that those treasures are in 

 the earth, and are to be brought forth as gold was in California 

 when wanted, as petroleum was in Pennsylvania when wanted, 

 as they have just discovered in Germany, at Stassfurth, a won- 

 derful deposit, as of the boiling down of an ocean, leavir.g a 

 mineral deposit which will enrich all the continent — twenty-five 

 miles square and twelve hundred feet thick. At the bottom, 

 the least soluble part, is sulphate of lime ; above that, a thou- 

 sand feet of rock-salt ; above that, sulphate of magnesia and 

 sulphate of soda ; and above that, a hundred feet, more or less, 

 of the chloride of magnesium, chloride of calcium, and chloride 

 of potassium. Here is a supply of mineral wealth enough to 

 last the whole continent for centuries. They are just begin- 

 ning to dig it out. It has hardly yet worked its way into the 

 market. There may be some gentlemen here who know some- 

 thing about the alkaline manures made in Cambridge by Dr. B. 

 A. Gould, who has imported some of this article, prepared it 

 for market, and offered it for sale. It is chiefly chloride of 

 potassium and sulphate of potash. It is an alkaline manure, so 

 called. It furnishes potassium chiefly. This is made out of 



