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tee presume to offer opinions or suggestions concerning them. 

 But as much good to the farmer's interests is believed to have 

 been done by the statements of several series of experiments 

 with manufactured fertilizers, published in our Transactions of 

 1866, a further consideration of the subject may be admissable. 

 The question how can the farmer maintain and increase the 

 fertility of his fields, and also secure an annual remunerative 

 crop, is one of paramount interest to every cultivator of the 

 soil, and at the same time difficult to answer. The result of 

 the carefully conducted experiments before alluded to, and 

 many others which, after the ice was once broken, were made 

 public by modest experimenters, who did not care to stem the 

 flood tide of popular advertisements and endorsements of the 

 various nostrums for securing universal fertility, is, that they 

 do not answer the desired end. What little fertilizing quality 

 they possess will not pay the cost of them. We mention, for 

 instance, the flour of bone. No one questions the great fer- 

 tilizing properties of bone, but that the flour of bone is in a 

 condition to be immediately assimilated by plant growth, it 

 therefore fails to answer the purpose required of it. Hence 

 the farmer who earns his money cannot afford to pay the high 

 price demanded for it when he can buy the pure unground 

 bones for one-third the price, and reduce them at a small ex- 

 pense to a condition readily assimilated by all plants. 



Mr. Henry Coleman uttered a valuable truth when on be- 

 ing asked '' what has chemistry done for the farmer ?" he re- 

 plied that it had dissolved bones by sulphuric acid- 



Nor is it for a moment questioned that Peruvian Guano is a 

 very valuable specific fertilizer, but as a general thing its high 

 cost places it beyond the reach of the practical farmer. Fish 

 pomice or guano, is sold at a comparatively low price, is un- 

 adulterated, makes a valuable compost, and may perhaps be 

 afforded. Many of the articles offered in our markets as fer- 

 tilizers at high prices, recommended as being entirely inoffen- 

 sive to the most fastidious, may be well adapted to those who 

 would farm with kid gloves on, and to such only can we recr 

 ommend them, 



