122 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
position, on this most important subject, 
that I take the liberty of quoting largely 
therefrom, and suggest to all consumers 
of feeding stuffs in the State, to send to 
the Experiment Station at Lake City, for 
a copy of this ‘^Special Bulletin, No. 30.” 
Professor Blair says, ‘‘The fact that 
Florida is largely a vegetable and fruit 
growing State, has seemed to render 
necessary the importation, from other 
States, of large quantities of concentrated 
feeding stuffs. I have no means of veri¬ 
fying the statement, but I believe that I 
am safe in saying that in proportion to the 
population and the number of farm ani¬ 
mals, no other State in the Union imports 
such large quantities of these materials 
for home consumption. 
Tlie Necessity for a Feeding Stuffs Inspec¬ 
tion Ijaw. 
The question as to the quality of these 
goods seems never to have troubled us 
seriously. We have been content to take 
what the manufacturer is pleased to send 
us, and if the quality has been poor, cither 
the animals have suffered or we have been 
compelled to buy an additional quantity to 
compensate for the inferior quality, or 
both. On the other hand we have not been 
content thus to accept what the manu¬ 
facturers of fertilizers were sending us, 
but have required them to state the in¬ 
gredients used in the manufacture of the 
goods, and guarantee that they will, on 
analysis, show a certain percentage of the 
fertilizing constituents—plant food; and 
we have further clothed the State Chemist 
with power to collect and analyse samples 
and publish to the State the results of his 
work, in order that the farmer and fruit¬ 
grower may be protected from the sale of 
adulterated goods. 
But a large quantity of commercial fer¬ 
tilizers used in the State is manufactured . 
here, and to say to the fertilizer manufac¬ 
turers of this State, “You must make your 
fertilizers, which you furnish us for grow¬ 
ing our crops, come up to a definite 
guarantee,” while we say to the manufac¬ 
turers of concentrated feeding stuffs in 
other States (for practically all the 
ground products on the market come 
from other States.) “You may send to us 
for feeding our stock whatever grade 
of goods you choose,” does not seem en¬ 
tirely just to the manufacturers of fer¬ 
tilizers. 
It is perhaps, true that greater loss 
would result from the use of inferior fer¬ 
tilizers than from the use of inferior feed¬ 
ing stuffs, and that it is easier to practice • 
deception with the former than with the 
latter, still this does not make it less imn 
portant that he who buys feeding stuffs 
should be protected from inferior and 
fraudulent goods. The great variety of 
mixed feeds, and proprietary feeds makes 
it comparatively easy to deceive even 
those who have had considerable ex¬ 
perience in handling such goods. How 
many of those who buy feeding stuffs can 
say that they do not contain ground corn 
cobs, rice hulls, corn bran, etc.^ any more 
than the farmer can say that his fertilizers 
do not contain low grade materials worth 
but little more than half the price asked 
for them? The fact that the following 
State viz.: Maine Vermont, Massa¬ 
chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, 
Maryland, Tennessee, Indiana, Wiscon¬ 
sin, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Ohio, 
now have feeding stuff laws in operation, 
would seem to indicate pretty clearly that 
there is need to gug,rd against adulteration 
and fraudulent practice. This fact in it¬ 
self ought to be sufficient to bring us to 
