58 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIAIENT STATION. 



to be a growing- tendency, it has been thought best to make a 

 list of the brands which fall considerably below guarantee. The 

 table which follows gives the names of the goods and the ingre- 

 dients in which they are deficient. No brand is included in this 

 list unless it falls short by at least one-tenth in one or more of its 

 ingredients. While the number of brands which are consider- 

 ably below their guarantee in one or more ingredients is quite 

 large, there is little reason for thinking that there is any inten- 

 tion to defraud. It frequently happens that a fertilizer which is 

 below in one ingredient is considerably above in others. While 

 this frees the manufacturer from the suspicion of attempting to 

 defraud, it is nevertheless a serious defect in a fertilizer. It 

 is not enough that a fertilizer contains an equivalent amount 

 of some other kind of plant food. When the purchaser pays for 

 fifty pounds of nitrogen he is not rightly treated if the manu- 

 facturer gives him thirty pounds of nitrogen, even though he 

 gives him enough more of potash or phosphoric acid to make a 

 financial equivalent. 



One of the claims which fertilizer manufacturers are making 

 for the superiority of their goods over "home mixed fertilizers" 

 is that the former are "manufactured." This should mean, if 

 it means anything, that the goods are more evenly mixed and 

 therefore more uniform. In the tables it will be found that in 

 some instances in which two samples of the same brand have 

 been taken and analyzed, that they dififer from each other quite 

 materially. The samples were taken with a great deal of care 

 by experienced men from a large number of packages. It would 

 not seem difficult to make "home mixed fertilizers" which should 

 run as uniform as some of the brands here reported upon. 



The goods made by the Provincial Chemical Fertilizer Com- 

 pany differ so greatly in composition from the guarantee that the 

 only conclusion seems to be that the company does not know what 

 it is doing. This is illustrated by comparing the guarantee and 

 the analysis of their Imperial Superphosphate as follows : 



Nitrogen 



Available phosphoric acid. 



Total phosphoric acid 



Potash 



Guaranteed. 



% 



2.51 



Found. 



% 



.86 



9.80 



9. J2 



12.10 



17.00 



1.50 



5.01 



