HOMCEOPATHY IN AGEICULTUKE. 195 



tilizing materials in their natural or " raw " state. You wiL 

 read from some writers who know little of science, and prob- 

 ably nothing of practice, that finely-ground South Carolina 

 rock will give admirable results ; that ground hoofs, hair, 

 horns, wool and leather waste, and undigested fish waste 

 and raw ground bone are all efficacious, and that it is need- 

 less to manufacture them in order to render them more 

 available for plant nutrition. It is not for me to quarrel with 

 these men, because from my standpoint as a manufacturer 

 it will be said that I am prejudiced, and that if these notions 

 should prevail, my occupation, like Othello's, would be 

 gone. Nevertheless, there is reason in all things, and for- 

 tunately, in the manufacture and application of fertilizers, 

 there is a great deal of science, which is but another name 

 for divine law. 



Fortj^-seven years ago. Baron von Liebig, the founder of 

 agricultural chemistry, made a very important discovery, — 

 perhaps the greatest of the age in agricultural chemistry. 

 He found that the application of bone treated with sulphuric 

 acid produced much better results than the untreated bone. 

 Now, bone is tri-basic phosphate of lime, that is, three parts 

 of lime to one part of phosphoric acid. It had been found 

 before Liebig's time that sulphuric acid had a greater affin- 

 ity for lime than phosphoric acid, and that when sulphuric 

 acid was applied to phosphate of lime, whether in the form 

 of bone or in the form of natural phosphate, it would take 

 one part of the lime, forming sulphate of lime, and leave 

 two parts of lime in combination with one of phosphoric 

 acid, or a compound which is soluble in water, and there- 

 fore, if applied as a fertilizer, much more available as a plant 

 food. This solu])le combination of the sulphuric acid and 

 lime is not a chemical liberation of the phosphoric acid, but 

 is a mechanical condition so finely subdivided that plants 

 can take it up. It is still a mooted question whether plants 

 have the power of extracting the phosphoric acid in the lab- 

 oratory of their roots, or whether the soluble phosphate of 

 lime is taken bodily into the plant and digested either in the 

 stalk or leaves. But it is claimed that when this superphos- 

 phate — for that is its true name — is applied to the soil, the 

 soluble phosphate of lime reverts, or goes back, to a state in 



