20 



he attemptefi to grow pineapples on the moist and fertile island 

 soil. Finally ending in failure and almost despair, he planted 

 a few on the sand ridge on the west bank of the Indian river at 

 Eden. To his surprise this soil proved exactly what the pines 

 wanted. From this small beginning, we may say that practi- 

 cally the whole pineapple industry on the spruce pine land of 

 the Indian river section had its origin. 



FERTILISERS. 



" In visiting the various sections of the Indian river country 

 during 1897 diligent enquiries were made of the principal 

 pineapple growers as to what forms of fertilisers they would 

 recommend for use on pineapples. The enquiry ended in find- 

 ing out that very few people agreed on using the same fertilis- 

 ing substance. Those who mixed their own fertilisers seemed 

 to be as much in doubt in regard to the action of particular 

 substances as anyone else. By far the greater number of pine- 

 apple growers, however, seemed to be depending on ready 

 mixed formula? for their use, the composition of these being in 

 no case known. While the fertiliser houses always appended 

 the percentage of nitrogen, potash, or phosphoric acid present, 

 there was no evidence as to the origin of the nitrogen, potash 

 or phosphoric acid. 



" A few points in connection with fertilising pineapples seem 

 to be admitted by a considerable number of pineapple growers. 

 However, there was no one form of nitrogen which was accepted 

 by the majority of the extensive growers ; and the same was 

 true of potash and phosphoric acid. It was not difficult to 

 find pineapple growers of more than local reputation who 

 would condemn a certain form or forms of ammonia, and their 

 neighbours would condemn certain other forms, and probably 

 advocate the forms condemned by the first neighbour. By 

 compiling the opinion of various growers every form of am- 

 monia was condemned, and the opposite of the proposition was 

 also true ; that is, every form of ammonia had its advocates. 

 The same was true of potash. Acid phosphate was quite gene- 

 rally considered a bad fertiliser. Of course everybody ferti- 

 lised, and eveiybody was dissatisfied with the action of certain 

 forms of fertilisers. Very few were entirely satisfied with the 

 forms of fertiliser that they were using, and the greater num- 

 ber of those that were satisfied with their fertiliser were people 

 who had not been in the pineapple business very long. 



OBJECTS OP THE EXPERIMENTS. 



" At this juncture the Experiment Station offered to set 

 aside a certain amount of money from the Hatch fund to con- 

 duct experiments on a sufficiently extensive scale that they 

 might be of value to the pineapple growers. Application was 



