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Vol. XLIV. No. 1859. 
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 12, 1885. 
PRICE FITS CENTS. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1885, by the Rural New-Yorker In the office Of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.1 
! 
FERTILIZER 
SPECIAL! 
(WITH SUPPLEMENT.) 
THE FIFTEENTH 
SPECIAL NUMBER 
OF THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
IMPORTANT PHASES OF THE 
FERTILIZER QUESTION 
CONSIDERED. 
(To be Continued next week.) 
Articles from Sir J. B. Laives, Prof. IF. O. 
Atwater, P)'of. O. C. Caldwell, Prof. J. W. 
Sanborn, Prof. W. 11. Jordan, Prof. L. B. 
A rnold, Prof . t. P Roberts, J. J. Thomas, 
T. S. Gold, Geo! Clendon, Dr, T. 11. Hos¬ 
kins, John A. Woodwar l, T. V". Munson, 
Hubert IV. Furnas, Col. F. D. Curtis, H. 
jfc. Engle, IF. I. Chamberlain, W. L. Dever- 
r eaux, etc., etc. 
Notes from Prof. IF. J. Beal, Gen. Wm. G. 
LeDuc, Parker Earle, Marshall P. Wilder, 
Ben Parley Poore, Geo. IF. Campbell, James 
J. Webb, Prof. J. L. Budd, and many others. 
THE BEST FERTILIZERS FOR SMALL 
FRUIT BY EXPERIENCED GROWERS. 
FAR5IERS! 
You can not Afford to Use Fertilizers 
at Random! 
THE REASONS WHY 
EXPERIMENTS ARE NEC ESS A R F. 
Does Your Land Need Complete 
or Special Fertilizers? 
Among the more important topics dis. 
cussed in this special number of the Ru¬ 
ral New-Yorker are the following: 
1. Fertilisers for ornamental plants. 
2. Why analyses do not necessarily allow the real 
value or fertilizers? 
3. Are fertilizers more profitable ou clay than on 
light soil? Why? 
4. The food in chemical fertilizers Is no more to be 
conilderod a- stimulants, than that In farm-yard 
manure. 
5. Why com:ileft fertilizers should not be condemn¬ 
ed because speotul fertilizers fall. 
ft. Will It pay tlu« farmer to purchase fertilizer in- 
gredleuta at wholesale, and mix disown fertilizers? 
7. What Is the profit of fertilizer manufacturers 
wnoso fertilizers analyze to be worth as much as their 
selling price? 
8. Should nitrogenous fertilizers be sown broad¬ 
cast, or in the hill or drill? 
t>. Why high grade fertilizers ure cheaper than low 
grades. 
1U. What advantages have farm-yard or stable 
manures over fertilizers? 
11. Why crops ou some soils are uot benefited by 
the use of chemical fertilizers. 
W. What Is the best way for the farmer to reduce 
whole bones to boue meal or flour? 
13. What are the best fertilizer formulae for po- 
, tatoes, corn, wheat, rye, oats, mangels,* turnips. 
Fig. 403. Fig. 404. 
FERTILIZER MACHINERY. (See page 615). 
fruits, etc.? 
j 14. Will commercial fertilizers be cheaper or dearer 
in price? 
15. What Is the value of S. C. rock superphosphate 
as compared with bone superphosphate? 
1C. Is it economy to dissolve S. C. rock with sul¬ 
phuric acid? 
COMPLETE VS. SPECIAL FERTILZERS. 
—MONEY-VALUATION OF FER¬ 
TILIZERS. 
PROF. W. O, ATWATER. 
Why should complete fertilizers not be 
condemned because special fertilizers fail? 
Abraham Lincoln was fond of answering 
questions by telling stories. Will you let me 
do the same? 
THE TESTIMONY OF EXPERIMENTS. 
On the outskirts of this city (Middletown, 
Conn.),is a farm whose proprietor, Mr. Sage, 
has made several series of field experiments 
with commercial fertilizers containing nitro¬ 
gen, phosphoric acid, potash, sulphuric acid, 
lime, etc. Iu his tests with corn, nitrogen, 
whether in nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammo¬ 
nia, dried blood, or other forms, has uniform¬ 
ly failed to bring any considerable increase. 
Phosphoric acid in superphosphates and bohe, 
has likewise had little effect. But 150 pounds 
of muriate of potash per acre, costing, in 
Middletown, $3.00 or $3.50 and containing 75 
pounds of “actual potash 1 ’ has, on the same, 
old, worn-out soil, made a difference between 
corn hardly worth the husking, and a crop of 
60 bushels (shelled] of what Mr. Sage calls “as 
nice corn as I ever saw, and a magnificent 
growth of stalks. 1 ' But while corn has re¬ 
sponded so uicely to the potash, and paid so 
little heed to nitrogen or phosphoric acid in 
any form, potatoes have given a profitable 
return for each of the substances, nitrogen 
phosphoric acid and potash, whenever and 
in whatever form they have been applied. 
Such is the outcome of Mr. Sage's experi¬ 
ments with fertilizing materials of attested 
quantity and quality upon more than 50 dif¬ 
ferent plots during several successive years, 
and his practice on a larger scale has substan¬ 
tiated the results. A large number of other 
gentlemen, in this State and elsewhere, have 
had an experience more or less similar. 
Five or six miles from here, in the town of 
Durham, is the farm of Mr. Newton, who 
has conducted similar experiments. With 
phosphoric acid, he has had no better success 
than Mr. Sage. Neither superphosphate nor 
bone helps the corn on one farm more than 
on another. But the potash, which Mr. Sage 
found so efficient, does no more good on Mr. 
Newton's land than the phosphoric acid,while 
the nitrogen which had scarcely any effect on 
Mr. Sage's eoru, works wonders with Mr. 
Newton’s. In whatever form the nitrogen is 
used, its effect is apparent, and one could al¬ 
most tell how many pounds had been applied 
per acre by the number of bushels of corn in 
the crop. Mr. Newton's experience with ni¬ 
trogen on corn, however, is a very unusual 
one. 
Mr. Bartholomew of Putnam, Conn., has a 
still different experience. His experiments 
have been even more numerous than those of 
Mr. Newton or Mr. Sage. They have ex¬ 
tended through a period of six or seven years 
and covered 50 or 60 plots, and, like the others, 
have been carried out with the skill of a good 
farmer and the spirit of u scientific investi¬ 
gator. Barring effects of drought, cold, and 
the like, every plot which has received phos¬ 
phoric acid in any form has brought au abun¬ 
dant return. On every plot without phos¬ 
phoric acid the crop has failed. The amount 
of corn has risen and fallen with the amount 
of phosphoric acid applied, while potash and 
nitrogen have had very little effect. But, 
while the com has thus uniformly responded 
