64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



State that this or that fertilizer contains just the proportions 

 of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash which they should 

 all use. This absurdity is heightened hf the fact that 

 scarcely any two companies agree in their discoveries as to 

 what are the needs of the various crops. Even the same 

 company advertises both a potato phosphate and a potato 

 manure, which are not alike, but just why we certainly 

 cannot affirm. 



We have suspected — and, if this is unjust, we hope to 

 be pardoned — that this multiplication of names is not due 

 to any knowledge which warrants such differentiation of 

 function with various fertilizing mixtures, but is simply a 

 trade expedient, adopted with the hope of selling more 

 goods under ten names than would l)e possible under one 

 or two. And these business concerns have an undoubted 

 legal and moral right to sell their wares under as many 

 trade-marks as they please ; but they are exercising this 

 right in a way that is adding confusion to confusion, is 

 increasing the expense and difficulties of the fertilizer con- 

 trol and is delaying the day of reason in the sale and use 

 of plant foo,d. 



The next matter to which I shall call your attention is 

 one touching the buyer, rather than the seller. We found 

 at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station that 

 the average composition of 313 brands of fertilizers sold in 

 New York in the spring of 1896 was approximately 3 per 

 cent N, 11 per cent PoOg and 5 per cent KgO. Why do 

 these relations exist in the proportions of the three im- 

 portant elements of plant food as found in the New York 

 trade ? One manufacturer doino; business in that State sells 

 a potato fertilizer in which the nitrogen, phosphoric acid 

 and potash are mixed in the proportions 1 , 4 and 2^ respec- 

 tively. In the case of another brand tlie proportions are 

 1, 2 and 3. What facts have been learned concerning the 

 , nutrition of the potato or the needs of New York soils that 

 warrant either of these formulfe ? 



In some brands of goods sold in the famous potato- 

 growing region, Aroostook County, Me., the ratio of 

 nitrogen, phosphoric acid and jjotash is not far from 1, 5 

 and 3. What good and well-fortified explanation have 



