204 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I907. 



rarely that a company that has been doing business in the State 

 for years offers a new brand. With the growth of the sale of 

 fertilizers in the State, companies that formerly did no business 

 in Maine are now sending their goods to the State. This of 

 course results in an increase in the number of brands. While 

 it is unfortunate that so many farmers .buy fertilizers from a 

 name rather than from the amount of plant food contained in 

 the fertilizer, it is gratifying that brands are not being unneces- 

 sarily multiplied. There has been a constant increase from the 

 20 brands licensed in 1885 to 200 or more brands of complete 

 manures and single ingredient chemicals licensed in 1907. 



When the manufacturers first put their goods upon the mar- 

 ket, recognizing the difficulty of accurate mixing, they placed 

 a somewhat elastic guarantee upon them. For instance, potash 

 might be guaranteed 4 to 5 per cent and for the most part the 

 goods would carry 4.5 per cent of potash. As competition 

 became closer and the process of manufacture became some- 

 what more trustworthy, the manufacturers worked closer and 

 closer to the minimum guarantee so that at present it rarely 

 happens that high grade fertilizers carry much above the mini- 

 mum percentages of nitrogen and potash, the more costly con- 

 stituents of a fertilizer. If this were the whole story there 

 would be nothing to complain of, but up to the present year 

 there has been an increasing tendency to fail to maintain the 

 goods up to their minimum guarantee. 



For the most part these are slight and generally in only one 

 constituent. It also usually happens that the other constituents 

 are in sufficient excess to preclude any idea of intention on 

 the part of the manufacturer not to live up to the guarantee. 

 Usually the trouble is due to incomplete mixing. For instance,. 

 in some formulas not more than 100 pounds of nitrate of soda 

 are used per ton. Nitrate of soda is a crystalline material and 

 it is difficult to so completely powder it and thoroughly incor- 

 porate it in the goods that the sample drawn in the inspector's 

 tube shall have its just amount — neither too much nor yet too- 

 little. To try to meet this difficulty, the samples are taken 

 from a large number of packages and the final sub-sample is 

 taken with the greatest care. It is because of the difficulty of 

 accurate sampling of fertilizers that the Station only undertakes 

 the analysis of samples taken by its inspector, and employs an 



