It is an aid in the decomposition of the vege¬ 
table matter contained in the soil. 
It does not naturally exist in the soil in 
quantities mffi dent for these purposes. 
It is heavy, and rapidly sinks through the 
soil, out of reach of ordinary cultivation. 
It follows that if applied to any soil in ex¬ 
cess of these combined demauds, the excess, 
by passing down through the soil,out of reach, 
is lost, and its use in very large quantities at 
one time is extravagant and wasteful. If 
applied year after year, or time after time, 
without the accompaniment of vegetable or 
organic matter, it exercises its functions of 
a solvent, of the plant food already in the soil, 
puts this in a condition to be utilized by the 
plants, and, therefore, while increasing the 
crops grown, and apparently producing good 
results, really tend3 to impoverishment of the 
soil, acts as a key to unlock the natural riches 
of the earth, and permit the robber crop to 
walk off with them. This use of it too is ex¬ 
travagant and wasteful, and justifies the old 
saying that “lime enriches the parent, butim- 
poverishes the son.” 
If applied in connection with organic mat¬ 
ter it exercises also its office of aidiug in the 
rapid decomposition of this, thereby contrib¬ 
uting immediately to the growth Of the crop, 
and permanently enriching the soil. 
If applied in moderate quantities to soil al¬ 
ready rich in organic matter, it finds immedi¬ 
ate exercise for all its functions, and will 
probably make a quicker and larger return 
for the money expended, than by any other 
use of it. I live in a section where lime 
abounds, and its use is very general, and lay¬ 
ing aside all mere theories, my own experience, 
added to a close observation of the experience 
of others, leads me to conclude that if its 
immediate and greatest effect upou worn 
land were desired, I should apply it, say 
from tweuty to forty bushels per acre, 
to wheat land, after plowing, mixing it 
through the soil by thorough harrowing. Its 
immediate effects would, of course, be upou 
the wheat crop, but in my judgment its per¬ 
manent effect, as au atd to the following clover 
crop, for which it seems to be a “special fertil 
izer,” would yield the greater profit. 
If. however, the land were in fair cropping 
condition, 8ud my object were its permanent 
and continued improvement—that “fattening 
of the soil” which makes its owner and his 
children, and bis children’s children rich and 
independent—1 should apply it, perhaps, in 
smaller quantities, to the wheat stubbles, dur¬ 
ing the Winter after the wheat was harvested. 
Not chat winter application is better than at 
any other season, but because it may then be 
done at less cost. Here it should retnam two, 
three, four, or as many years as my rotatiou 
would permit, urging the clover to luxurious 
growth, filling the ground with its unctuous 
roots, and decomposing toe leaves and stems 
as they fall—or the stubbles that remained 
after mowing, as the case might be—and mak¬ 
ing a glorious coat of riches to be turned 
down for the next corn crop. This is my 
own practice whenever circumstances permit 
it, though I sometimes apply it to wheat land 
as above described, in connection with a top- 
dressiDg of barnyard manure, as heavy as I 
can command. 
Upon water logged soils it has little or no 
effect, until underdrainiog opens them to its 
influences. 
Tenacious, heavy, clay soils are made com¬ 
paratively loose, loamy and friable, by its 
continued and judicious use. 
One good effect of lime, not fully appreci¬ 
ated, 1 think, is that it tends to early maturity 
of crops, particularly wheat—an advantage 
by no rneaus to be despised. 
It may not be amiss to say just here, that 
the best effects of lime are produced, other 
circumstances being equal, if it be applied im¬ 
mediately after slaking, wbilB yet in a flour- 
like condition. Its good qualities are sensibly 
diminished if delay in spreading permit rains 
to fall upon it aud make it pasty, besides 
adding greatly to the labor. 
My lime coBts me about 11 cents per bushel, 
iuelodiug the labor of hauling and spreading, 
fifty bushels per acrecosting $5.50. I believe 
It would pay at double the cost, or even three 
times; though in that case, I think I should 
use le.‘B quantity at a time, 
Sometimes 1 am asked if gas-lime (that 
which has been med for the purification of illu¬ 
minating gas) is valuable as a fertilizer. Yes 
and no. If applied directly as it comes from 
the works, it is not only valueless, but harm¬ 
ful. If exposed to the air, under cover, with 
frequeDt stirrings, for a term sufficient (say 
six months or more) for the oxygen of the au¬ 
to correct the sulphite of lime into sulphate, 
it becomes valuable, though not nearly to its 
original extent. 
SUPERPHOSPHATE. 
J. J. THOMAS. 
As regards commercial fertilizers, I would 
urge as a point of importance, and one too 
much overlooked by experimenters, the great 
difference in soils, and in the results which are 
obtained from this difference in the use of 
special manures. I made some trials with 
superphosphates at this place many years 
ago, but never obtained any appreciable ben¬ 
efit from them, except with those which con¬ 
tained ammonia, and this ingredieut could be 
had much cheaper in barn manure. Nearly 
the same result has occurred at other locali¬ 
ties immediately along the banks of Cayuga 
Lake. But uot 10 miles from here, and in the 
Popular Ridge region, superphosphates have, 
in some instances, doubled the wheat crop, 
and always greatly benefited it. Bo great 
was the advantage from its use, that in a dis¬ 
trict four or five miles wide and twice as long, 
and ou table land about 600 feet above the 
lake, between 800 and 1,000 tons have been 
purchased and applied annually of late years. 
The production of stable manure is largely 
increased, and the growth of grass and clover 
affords a richer sod. Thirty or forty bushels 
of wheat an acre are uow eomtnoa, where not 
more than half this amount was raised 30 
years ago. This increase was not caused 
wholly by the use of the fertilizer, regular tile 
draining having been resorted to as the foun¬ 
dation of all success. Saving and applying 
barn manure have had a large share; and the 
more thorough pulverization of the soil, re¬ 
quired in using the superphosphate, has been 
an important aid. 
The land here, at Union Springs, is not 
alone in giving no returns from the use of su¬ 
perphosphate. The advantage is so small on 
the University Farm at Ithaca that it does uot 
pay the cost: and I observe that the members 
of the Elmira Farmers’ Club find little or no 
benefit from it in the Chemung Valley. Wri¬ 
ters on the subject do not sufficiently discrim¬ 
inate. The soil here and on the Popular 
Ridge is apparently quite similar—a strong 
clay loam. 
I would recommend as the best way to util¬ 
ize bone meal or broken bone, to mix it in 
thin layers with farm manure, which it 
will improve in richness (in about such heaps 
as hoc-beds are made of); ani as com and 
other plants have looger roots than cultivators 
suppose, I would always spread broadcast. 
Experiments indicate this is best. 
Cayuga Co., N. Y. 
SPECIAL_V1EWS. 
T. V. MUXSON. 
3. Are fertilizers more profitable on clay 
than on light soils? Why? 
This depends entirely upon tbe kind of fer¬ 
tilizer used and tbe mauner of application. 
If stable or compost mauures be applied broad¬ 
cast and plowed in, they will generally prove 
more profitable on clay tban on light soils, 
from the fact that heavy eltty soil often needs 
little more tbau the aeratmg effect of coarse 
or fibrous rnauure to enable plants to consume 
elements already in the soil. Clay of calcare¬ 
ous soils holds nutritious elements ready for 
plant use better chan sandy soil.aud what is not 
consumed tbe first season is better retained 
for future use, while sandy soil, especially 
under great sun heat, as in the Southern 
Stales, bums out the organic elements, which 
escape either as gases or in solution by 
heavy rains, so that little effect remains after 
the first season’s application. If special or 
commercial fertilizers be used, then the light 
or already best aerated soil will give best re 
suits, providing the fertilizer supplies the 
elements needed in each soil. 
4. “The food oE chemical fertilizers is no 
more to be considered as stimulants than that 
of farm-yard manures." 
No; but if chemical fertilizers alone had 
been mentioned instead of the “food of,” then 
I would have said, ‘Yes, they are; ’ for often 
an eiemeut, such as salt, may act as a flux in 
tbe soil to loosen some eiemeut ueeded by the 
plant, which can be used only when the loos¬ 
ening process has occurred. This is a well 
known principle of chemistry, especially or¬ 
ganic chemistry. So a chemical fertilizer 
may be nothing more than a “stimulant,” 
flux or solvent, and yet be greatly beneficial. 
All mauures and fertilizers containing soda, 
potash or ammonia, are stimulants more or 
less in this sense, as well as true foods. Car¬ 
bon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are 
the chief plant foods. Farm-yard manures con¬ 
tain the first and third more abundantly at less 
cost than any other manures—[? Eds.]— hence 
they are the cheapest. Air and water con¬ 
tain tbe third aud fourth in abuufiauce, aud 
of the other two a part of the utilizablu sup¬ 
ply, hence as stable manure secures naturally 
a large bulk of plant food at the lowest rate, 
it ought to be more of a plant food than 
chemical fertilizer, and hence can never be 
so readily dispensed with, or, in other words, 
can never be entirely dispensed with, while 
chemical fertilizers can. 
8 Should nitrogenous fertilizers be sown 
broadcast, or in the hill or drills. 
If the object be to secure earliness, as in 
vegetable growing, then in the drill or hill, 
and for early vegetables afterwards as well as 
for every other cultivated crop, broadcast, if 
at once plowed or cultivated iuto the soil. 
Not only nitrogenous, but all chemical fertil¬ 
izers should be either applied in tbe drill or 
broadcast, as their action is immediate, so soon 
as moistened. But they should be at once 
stirred into the soil to prevent wastage bv the 
action of air, suu-lightaud heat. An excellent 
way to apply them, especially in plowed crops 
would be to have hollow-toothed cultivators 
for the purpose, by which means the fertili¬ 
zers would be left at the exact point ueeded 
for proper distribution. But I know of no 
such cultivators. Here is room for invention, 
10. What advantages have farmyard or 
stable manures over fertilizers? 
This has been partly answered above under 
No 3, but I condense what I have there said, 
and add more. 
1. Stable manure is fibrous, and swells like 
a string when wet, and shriuks when dry, by 
which means it opens air, passages in the soil 
—aerates it. 
2. Its application is beneficial to almost 
every soil and product. 
3. It is the refuse of the farm itself, and can 
be produced ia sufficient abundance on almost 
any properly managed farm, by keeping 
stock, and turning all weeds and vegetable 
waste into the manure heap, with the animal 
excreta, both solid and liquid, and mixing 
properly, with the compost, old Balt, lime, 
ashes and such other materials as can usually 
be readily collected io any community at a 
trifling cost, compared with the price of com¬ 
mercial fertilizers, and at the same time this 
practice will aid in removing disease-produc¬ 
ing matter from the community. 
Grayson Co, 
CONSIDERATION OF SUBJECTS NOS. 
2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11,12. 
H. M. ENGLE. 
2. Analyses of fertilizers by different chem¬ 
ists show so much uniformity, tuat we have 
no reason to doubt their correctness; but that 
the effects of the fertilizers vary in different 
soil in the same seasoD, and also on the same 
soils in different seasons, ;is also certain. 
The actual causes of such results are not so 
easily explained. 
It is conceded that phosphoric acid, potash 
and nitrogen constitute tbe priucipal ingredi¬ 
ents necessary for the fertilization of all 
crops, and some crops require more of the 
first; others more of the second, and, again, 
others more of the last. Now different fertil¬ 
izers also contain different proportions of 
these ingredients, and when a farmer happens 
to apply a fertilizer that contains just what 
his soil or crop needs, and applies it at the 
proper time, ani the season favors him with 
rain at the right time, with proper cultivation 
be will hardly fail to get a full crop, aud oft- 
times above that; but whoa all the above con¬ 
ditions are leversed, tbe production will also 
be reversed in about the same ratio. Between 
these extremes will be found all intermediate 
conditions aud effects, aud unless the farmer 
biinself is an experimenter, commercial fer¬ 
tilizers with him wifi he simply a lottery. 
4. The plant food in chemical fertilizers is 
no more a stimulant than that of barn-yard 
manure. It must, however, not be forgotten 
that they add little or no bumus, or vegetable 
matter, to the soil, which, in many instances, 
is almost as important as plant food, since a 
proper physical condition of the soil is neces¬ 
sary to bring about good results. 
5. In many oases, special fertilizers will give 
as good results as complete ones, aud at less 
cost, if the farmer only knows what to apply, 
and therefore ueithercan justly be condemned. 
When the soil contains any one ingredieut 
of plant food in sufficient quantity, and in an 
available condition, there is no occasion to 
expend money to supply it artificially. 
6. When the farmer can purchase fertilizers 
which contain tbe proper proportions of fer¬ 
tilizing material for his need, at a reasonable 
margin above » holesale prices, it will not pay 
him to do the mixiug, since manufacturers 
have better facilities to prepare them. It is 
only In case where too much freight is paid 
for bulk that has uo value, that it will pay to 
mix the ingredients on the farm. 
7. There can be no profit to the manufactur¬ 
er, unless he buys below bis selling price, and 
since he purchases bis material fu quantities 
so much larger tban the farmer possibly can, 
he, of course, gets it cheaper, no doubt often 
below wholesale quotations. 
8. Since nitrogenous fertilizers are more 
volatile than any other, it is evident that they 
should be mixed with the soil at once. 
9. The high grade fertilizers are cheaper iu- 
as much as they contain equal value in much less 
bulk. In the same way, with regard to coin, 
a man could carry in a valise as great an 
amount in gold a« a horse could haul in a wagon 
loaded with pennies. 
10. I have referred to this point in No. 4, 
and can see no other reason than that the large 
bulk of vegetable matter in barn yard manure 
keeps the soil in the -best physical condition. 
If we al ways had a sufficiency of clover to plow 
down in connection with proper commercial 
fertilizers, any difference between the appli¬ 
cation and stable manuring, might become 
more of an unsolved problem. 
It. Such soils have either a supply of neces¬ 
sary fertilizing material, or are notin a proper 
condition to make commercial fertilizers avail¬ 
able for plant food. 
12. It will not pay an ordinary farmer to 
buy a bone mill for his own use. The cheap¬ 
est method for him to make bones available 
for plant food, is to break them up into rea¬ 
sonably small pieces, aud mix them with an 
equal bulk of good wood ashes,well moistened, 
uutil the bones are soft, when tbe whole 
should be well mixed with some dry material, 
sufficient to put it in condition to drill or 
sow. Gvpsurn and any road dust answer a 
good purpose to dry it properly. 
Lancaster Co., Pa. 
FERTILIZERS. 
J. M. HUBBARD. 
The ultimate object of the application of 
all manures is to make crops grow. In the 
thought of one farmer, this is accomplished 
by rnaklug the land rich; iu the thought of 
another, it is accomplished by feeding the 
plants which compose the crop, 
The man who makes his land rich that it 
may bear good crops, is like him who fills a 
store-house. The man who feeds his plauts is 
like him who sets a table. Tue store-house 
may be filled with crude material; but the 
table must beset with prepared food. 
Me king the laud rich was the old idea of 
good farming: feeding tbe plant is a late con¬ 
ception of agricultural seteuce. it is without 
doubt a valuable conception; but it does not 
destroy the value of the old idea of making 
and keeping the land rich in stores of plant 
food, or, m other words, filling and keeping 
tilled the store-house whence hungry crops 
are to draw their supplies. Plants can wait 
upon themselves, if food properly prepared, 
is placed within their reach, and earth and air 
are full of willing servitors who can prepare 
their food for them. 
So far as the work of preparing plant food, 
the grinding, mixing and dusolviag can be 
done by tue mechanical aud caemical forces 
of Nature, it is certainly wise to employ them, 
for their services are rendered without charge. 
So far as the plant c*u wait upon itself, it may 
wisely be allowed to do so, as its service is 
voluntary and gratuitous. In both cases we 
may find occasion to supplement and supply 
the deficiencies of Nature's work ; but we 
make a mistake if we try' to take it a way from 
her. 
Sometimes it is more convenient to apply 
the different fertilizing elements to the soil 
separately. It is just as well to do this and 
have the operation of mixing performed in 
the soil by the operations of culture, as upon 
the barn floor or iti tbs factory, by hand 
labor or by machinery. Indeed, so far as the 
farmer is concerned, the importance of this 
operation of mixing is greatly exaggerated. 
To the fertilizer manufacturer, whose goods 
are to lie tested and judged by r a raudom sam¬ 
ple, it is of groat importance that the mixing 
of his materials be so thorough a^ti make tbe 
composition of his goods uniform. But this 
is a need whicu the farmer does not shore. 
He only needs to know what he gets, and to 
get it in such shape that he can make the ap¬ 
plication to his fields reasonably uniform. 
He does not need to chase percentage iuto 
fractions iu dealing with his land or his crops. 
The point at which to uim is to meet tbe 
necessities of the case and to stop there. 
Farming is not so profitable a business that 
one can afford to throw away either material 
or labor. 
The great need of farmers everywhere is a 
better understanding of the mutual relations 
of soil, crop and fertilizers. Uutil we come 
to that, we shall be liable to costly bluudera 
iu our own management and to equally costly' 
errors ia following blind or unprincipled 
leaders. 
Middlesex Co., Conn. 
QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 
SEC. W. I CHAMBERLAIN. 
Five years’ duties us State Inspector of 
Commercial Fertilizers, und familiarity with 
tbeir use ou my own farm, have given me at 
least clear and decided opinions on most of 
tbe points about which the Rural asks my 
opinion. 1 will state them briefly, number¬ 
ing them to correspond with the questions put, 
and hold myself ready to give the reasons at 
some future time, if desired. 
