manure contains, according to Prof. W. W. Cooke, twenty- 
two pounds of plant food in the ton. As Bradley’s Com- 
plete Manures contain about 450 pounds of plant food, 
they have more than twenty times as much plant food as 
average barnyard manure ; consequently, to apply a given 
amount of these plant food elements to a field, the labor 
required in hauling and handling barnyard manure is 
twenty times greater than to apply the same elements in 
Bradley's Complete Manures. Of available plant food, 
Bradley's Complete Manures contain about ten times as 
much nitrogen, fifty times as much phosphoric acid, and 
eight times as much potash as barnyard manure. Aver- 
age barnyard manure contains about 1,596 pounds of 
water to the ton. The “ fancy farmer ” does not reflect 
that, while he is farming for fun as his primary object, the 
practical farmer gets his bread and butter from the soil he 
tills. Which, then, is the more likely to pursue the more 
economical methods, or whose experience is the more 
valuable, that of a lifetime of practical and successful 
farming or that of a few years of experimental tilling ? 
The answer is obvious. And yet the successful business 
man, upon resuming the occupation of his boyhood, is too 
apt to consider his judgment superior to that of the prac- 
tical farmer, and therefore fertilizes his fields by the most 
expensive methods ; either by keeping many head of cattle 
or by buying barnyard manure from the nearest village, 
the expense of drawing and applying which will far ex- 
ceed the cost of an equivalent amount of plant food in 
a first-class commercial fertilizer. 
The Rothamsted experiments, as conducted by Sir J. B. 
Lawes, with wheat, have recently completed their thirty- 
sixth year, though the land had been in wheat eight years 
before, or forty-four years in all. The average yield per 
acre where fourteen tons of barnyard manure were used 
has been thirty-one and a quarter bushels annually for 
thirty-six years, while the average on three plots dressed 
with the same amount of actual plant food, but in the 
form of chemicals, has been thirty-four and three quarters 
bushels. Here is an average gain over the manure crop 
of three and a half bushels per annum, for thirty-six years, 
by the use of fertilizers. This doesn’t look much like 
“exhausting the soil ” by the use of fertilizers. It is the 
want of fertilizers, not their use, that exhausts soils. The 
average weight of the wheat per bushel has been sixty-one 
and a half pounds when manured, and sixty-one and an 
eighth pounds where fertilized, while the straw and chaff 
per acre have weighed 3,125 pounds and 3,475 pounds 
per acre respectively. 
While Bradley’s Superphosphate is the acknowledged 
standard as a general fertilizer for all crops, there has 
been a demand in some sections, where intensive farming 
and market gardening prevails, for fertilizers containing 
more nitrogen and potash for use on some crops. 
Bradley’s Complete Manures (described on the follow- 
ing pages) have more fully met this demand than any 
other fertilizers on the market, as the letters from prom- 
inent farmers (with illustrations of crops) in this pamphlet 
will testify. 
