84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



as long as the stations figure out valuations for the farmers, 

 just so long will they look to the money column and skip 

 the chemical column, which is the truly educational one. 

 You cannot teach what nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 

 potash mean, their relations to each other and to crops and 

 soils, by computing them in dollars and cents. Finally, w^e 

 said that the State in its police duty had no right to go 

 beyond a statement of what it found, — that this was the 

 beginning and end of inspection. If the question of making 

 valuations is ever taken into court, it will be thrown out ; 

 it will have no standing. 



I am an honest T)eliever in special manures. I do not 

 want to say a word that shall appear to advertise, but I say 

 that I am a disciple of the apostle of special fertilization, 

 namely. Prof. Levi Stockbridge of Amherst. Some day we 

 shall erect a tablet in memory of the man who had the cour- 

 age and the keenness of vision to formulate a principle for 

 our guidance in this work, and which we have called for many 

 years the Stockbridge principle. It will live long after we 

 are dead, l)ecause it sets up the only true standard for the 

 feeding of crops and the combining of plant food. It is 

 this : " Supply the crop in suitable proportion, association 

 and form with that plant food which it requires, and which 

 it cannot ol)tain for itself from the soil or air in sufficient 

 (juantity, the supply being based upon the analysis of the 

 crop and its hal)its and conditions of growth." 



Now, this takes the plant, the living thing, and not the 

 dead soil, as our starting-point. You will observe that it 

 also includes the air and the soil, as well as habits and con- 

 ditions of growth. Up to this time we had been groping 

 for a standard. Peruvian guano was a sort of standard, 

 and fertilizers were made to imitate it. Then Professor 

 Liebig came out with superphosphate of lime or dissolved 

 bone, w^hich formed a standard, but it contained only a 

 limited amount of nitrogen and no potash, certainly unbal- 

 anced and arbitrary. 



Now, I want to ask Professor Jordan wdiat standard he 

 recommends. If we do not take some guide, as the man 

 said in Congress, where are we at? Professor Jordan Avill 

 bear me out in the statement that the farmers of Maine 



