COMMERCIAL FERTILISERS 367 



which the fertiliser will be applied, or of its needs 

 as regards plant food. In order to be sure that it 

 will be of some benefit on all soils, then, it is neces- 

 sary for it to contain all three plant foods. But, as 

 will be emphasised later on, very few soils really 

 need additions of all three; some need only one. 

 In such cases the use of a complete fertiliser is 

 wasteful. 



Many Brands. Most fertiliser manufacturers 

 sell many brands, or different combinations of raw 

 materials. Some firms sell as many as forty-five 

 brands, each one, presumably, different from all 

 the others, and designed to meet the needs of cer- 

 tain soils or certain crops. Thus we have Smith's 

 Mortgage-lifter Fertiliser, Jones' Sure-crop Fer- 

 tiliser, Brown's Special Potato Fertiliser, White's 

 Corn Fertiliser, and so on. In one year 1,112 

 brands of fertilisers were sold in the State of New 

 York alone. In most states the number is from 

 150 to 300. 



State Supervision of the Fertiliser Trade. How 

 shall the farmer know which of these many brands 

 to choose? Some of them are just what his soil 

 and crops need; some would be almost worthless 

 to him. The national and state governments have 

 now come to the assistance of the farmer in this 

 important matter. State laws specify that no fer- 

 tiliser manufacturer or dealer shall sell any brand 

 of fertiliser in any state, either direct from the 

 factory or through an agent, until the brand has 

 first been registered with some appointed authority, 

 usually the Director of the State Experiment 

 Station. The manufacturer is further required to 

 put a tag on each bag of fertiliser, giving an anal- 

 ysis of its contents specifying the amount of each of 



w A v O 



the essential plant foods it contains. Every year 



