Part II.] MAINTENANCE OF SOIL FERTILITY. 47 



Mr Bkooks. I wonder if I could take about two minutes? 

 I want to express the great pleasure I have had in listening to 

 Director Thome, and there are very few things that he has said 

 to which I would take any exception, — practically none. He 

 has advised you to study your own soil conditions. What I 

 have to say is simply intended to emphazise that point. If you 

 should apply acid phosphate to most of our soils without potash 

 you would find the clover would not follow it; you must have 

 potash on all the soils of this particular section of the State; of 

 this I feel perfectly sure. We have tried it repeatedly. This is 

 a very serious question, which all men interested in crop pro- 

 duction are asking themselves, — what is going to be the result 

 of another year without potash? Can you afford to risk it? 

 Unfortunately, I do not know. We got very good crops last 

 year without potash, but I want to call attention to this one 

 thing: in such experiments as I have tried, where potash has 

 been used in connection with nitrogen and phosphorus enough 

 to make it possible for it to have its full effect, it has usually 

 given an increase in the staple crop of 50 to 60 bushels. Now it 

 is a question whether you cannot afford to pay even the $5 per 

 unit if you can count on getting anywhere near that increase in 

 staple, because the potash is very important; but the money 

 value of the increase is so much less that I should say, without 

 hesitation, I will risk corn without potash, although I know the 

 potash will help it, and at ordinary prices it would be richly 

 profitable. I have no disposition to detract from the emphasis 

 Director Thorne attaches to phosphorus. I made a little calcu- 

 lation in writing a bulletin which was published about a year 

 and a half ago, which will interest you, perhaps, in what he said 

 about milk. He said that milk contained a large amount of 

 phosphate of lime, and probably dairy farmers would do well to 

 pay particular attention to it. The milk of twenty cows for one 

 year, allowing them to give 6,000 pounds of milk each in the 

 year, would contain 100 pounds of phosphorus. The feed which 

 the average dairyman would buy, — wheat bran, gluten, cot- 

 tonseed, etc., — in figuring conservatively, would contain some- 

 thing like 600 pounds of phosphoric acid, so that under the 

 dairy practice common in this State I see no possibility that 

 your soils are becoming impoverished in phosphorus. On the 

 contrary, I think they have been growing richer and richer in 



