350 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
All this is very good I replied, but I want to 
know what the mew have to do in bad weath¬ 
er? “They have enough to do too, you may 
depend. I always examine the condition of 
the horses’ shoes ,and send them'to the shop 
if they require it, instead of waiting, till they 
are barefoot and perhaps then have to send 
them when most busy. They shell the corn 
so as to keep a quantity ahead to be ready 
to send to mill when it is wanted. They oil 
the harness when it needs it, and when all 
these are cared for, I employ them in the 
wood-house, either sawing wood or making 
posts for fence. No, there is no time on 
the farm for idleness if you have tools and 
good calculation. If your harness requires 
a few minutes work,or your ax handle breaks, 
or a hundred other things on the farm, it is 
often ten-fold more trouble and delay to take 
them to be mended, than to go to work and 
mend them yourself.” 
But, I observed, I expected farmers took 
their comfort rainy days, or employed their 
time in reading the papers. 
“Comfort! why, what satisfaction is there, 
when just in the most busy time some article 
gives out, small it ma)' be too, and you have 
to go some miles and lose half a day, while 
if you were prepared with a few plank or 
stuff ready made as I have here, it might not 
delay a quarter of an hour ? And as to read¬ 
ing, this very preparation in rainy days and 
odd times, as we call them, keeps me before 
hand with my work, and we can every one 
of us read our papers. Thanks to the pro¬ 
gress of the age there are papers adapted to 
every member of the family, and I subscribe 
for each. Mother wants a paper adapted to 
her taste, full of good reading, perhaps con¬ 
taining a well written moral tale. My daugh¬ 
ters have their taste, and my boys too. For 
myself, and boys also, I have one for gener¬ 
al news, and two on agriculture—one near 
home, and one at a distance. I find an agri¬ 
cultural paper almost like a geography, for 
what are they but a description ofthe earth.” 
Yes, I said, but one is a western paper. 
Their style of farming is different from what 
it is here, and°their soil is unlike ours. 
“Would you tell your teacher not to in¬ 
struct your children about any other parts 
of the world, but about the United States 
only? No, indeed. I want to be informed 
of the mode of agriculture in every corner of 
the earth.” 
My friend I found was pretty warm in 
favor of Agricultural journals, and after giv¬ 
ing Judge Buel, and sundry other of you 
agricultural editors the due meed of praise, 
I interrupted by asking him if he did not 
find himself “ sold” sometimes by the “great 
blessings ” some great benefactor was dis¬ 
posed to shower on us. His reply was “ If 
I purchase any, it is in very small quantities, 
so that there will be little lost. My neigh¬ 
bor Williams goes it strong. He has a quan¬ 
tity of the Chinese yam in his garden, and 
he is sanguine his fortune is made, for he 
says if he can sell 100 bushels like the price 
he paid to a celebrated prince, his fortune is 
made. But I fear the bubble is burst, and 
whether his hogs will be paid to root them 
out I do not know. Some of his waggish 
neighbors, in vi ' "nr enormous growth, 
advise him to procure a stump er, and a 
yoke of oxen to extract them.’ 
The clouds having spent, or rather scat¬ 
tered their last drops, I arose to depart, and 
accepting an invitation to come again and 
look over his orchard and garden and pass 
judgment on a fine growth of Chinese sugar 
cane which he thinks is destined to make 
him still more independent, I took my leave. 
North Hempstead, L. I. S. 
THE ARTIFICIAL MANURES TESTED BY 
[During the past summer, an extended set 
of careful analyses of market samp*es of 
sundry artificial manuies was made by 
Samuel W. Johnson, now Professor ol An¬ 
alytical Chemistry in Yale College. It 
was our good fortune to spend some years 
in company with Prof. Johnson, at the Yale 
Agricultural school, when under the super¬ 
vision of its founder the late Prof. John P. 
Norton, and we then learned to place a high 
value upon his careful and skillfull experi¬ 
ments. Since that time Prof. J. has passed a 
couple of years or more with Liebig, and 
other noted European Chemists, in the study 
of the Chemistry of Agriculture and he is 
now in his new and responsible station doing 
good service to the cause of Agricultural 
improvement. A full account of the recent 
examinations of manures above alluded to 
was published in the Homestead The first 
number we reproduced in the July Agricul¬ 
turist. As the whole would occupy to much 
space, and as there were many details not 
interesting to the[general reader, we request¬ 
ed Prof. Johnson to furnish a summary of the 
reports, which is given below. 
These investigations are published in the 
same spirit that they were made, viz.: not 
to depreciate one man’s manufacture or 
praise another, but simply to furnish the an¬ 
swer given by a careful, thorough and impar¬ 
tial application of Chemical Analyses. For 
ourselves we must confess that we place less 
reliance than formerly upon any results to 
be derived from a knowledge of the mere 
chemical constitution of a soil. We look 
more to its mechanical condition, its coarse¬ 
ness and fineness, freedom from water &c. 
Our views on this subject are refered to in 
our October number under “ Why does clay 
benefit sandy soil.” Still we believe that 
chemistry is already competent to show us 
somewhat of the value of fertilizers —it will 
at least inform us whether a fertilizer con¬ 
tains in its composition what it is said to con¬ 
tain, and in this respect the following state¬ 
ments are highly important. 
That the value of the fertilizers as given 
below, if estimated according to the amount 
of ammonia and soluble phosphoric acid, is 
correct, there can be no doubt, and the man¬ 
ufacturers would not be likely to challenge 
new analyses. Whether any additional 
value, due to carbonaceous matter in any 
of the fertilizers is to be allowed to them, it 
remains for the manufacturers themselves 
to show.—E d.] 
To the Editor ofthe American Agriculturist. 
I comply cheerfully with your request to 
furnish for thp. a g riculturist , a condense 
statement of the results of my examinations 
of commercial fertilizers. Your readers 
have already been made acquainted with the 
general value of this investigation from my 
first article on the subject, in your July num¬ 
ber. In that paper I drew attention to the 
increasing business in high-priced fertilizers, 
and to the certainty that among them, there 
arc many nearly or utterly worthless com¬ 
pounds, calculated under specious names to 
cheat the farmer out of the trouble and 
money spent in their use. I alluded to the 
rapidly increasing dangers to which farmers 
are thus exposed, and showed that the only 
secure protection against these frauds, must 
be furnished by chemical analyses. I fur¬ 
ther showed that the certificates of the deal¬ 
ers, though endorsed by names ofhigh stand¬ 
ing in the commercial world, can not be de¬ 
pended on, and finally, promised to publish 
my own analyses, or those made under 
my direction, as a guide and warning. This 
I have done. In the five articles furnished 
by me to the Homestead on this subject, are 
given the results of thirty-four analyses made 
in this Laboratory, and executed on three 
Guanos, two Poudreltes, one of them called 
Ta Feu, eight Superphosphates of Lime, and 
two fish manures. In these analyses, I have 
been ably assisted by Messrs. Seely, Twin¬ 
ing, Rockwell, Watson, and Willson. 
In order to avoid the possibility of any 
mistake, in every instance duplicate analyses 
were made. 
In the introductory article, in answer to 
the question—“ What substances are to be 
regarded as important m costly manures ?” I 
have endeavored to make evident that but 
two bodies are to be thus considered, viz.: 
ammonia and phosphoric acid. 
The distinction between commercial and 
manurial value must be carefully kept in 
mind. Scientifically considered, all the doz¬ 
en substances found in plants, are equally 
important. Economically considered how¬ 
ever, those matters are most important, 
which from their scarcity, or from their be¬ 
ing in great commercial demand, are most 
costly. In your July number, and in my 
fourth article in the Homestead (No. 43,) are 
adduced at length the reasons which have 
led me to confine the value of a high-priced 
manure to these two ingredients, and to 
adopt for them the following scale of prices. 
Ammonia.16 cents per lb. 
Insoluble phosphoric acid. 2 “ “ 
Soluble. 5 “ “ 
The commercial value of a manure which 
sells as high as one cent per pound, may be 
safely estimated by multiplying the number 
of pounds of ammonia and phosphoric acid 
in a ton, by the above prices. These two 
ingredients are the only ones,’excepting pot¬ 
ash, which have a commercial value as high 
as one cent per pound. They are the only 
ones which the farmer can not generally buy 
at even less than that price. The other ele¬ 
ments of manures are usually so abundant in 
the soil that, with judicious rotations, an ar¬ 
tificial supply is unnecessary. 
With regard to manures which are sold at 
less than one cent per pound, the same rule 
commonly holds good; because the great 
bulk of such manures usually consists o l 
