120 
SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OP THE 
In regard to lime: There is a great many soils round 
where I live and the orange grows there most magnificently. 
In our shell hammocks you dig through the ground and it 
is like digging in some of the mountainous valleys of New 
York; there there are more stone than soil, with us more 
shells than soil; yet we get good oranges from these shell 
lands, and I think it is largely due to the lime. There is a 
good deal of phosphate in oyster shells as well as lime. 
We should tails into cceioideration the different uses of these 
different materials. Phosphate is for the purpose of enabling 
the vegetable to reproduce itself. Ammonia is nothing but 
nitrogen. Ammonia is the form of nitrogen that is most 
valuable in plant life. The air is full of nitrogen and we can 
get largely of ammonia from the atmosphere, but plant life 
needs assistance to get this nitrogen. If every grower would 
devote a little more time and study to the elementary princi¬ 
ples of agricultural chemistry, we would not be so much at 
the mercy of the fertilizer dealers, or at such a loss when and 
how to fertilize. 
G. P. Healy —Mr. Lyman Phelps has told us again and 
again just what this gentleman is telling us. The orange 
grower is supposed to pay double for everything he gets, and 
that is all there is to it; he wants fertilizer and he pays for it, 
A fertilizer man with a box of “two-fors” in his pocket can 
take in the Florida orange grower, and the man that is not an 
orange grower can sell him fertilizer and make him think he 
gets the best thing in the world. He does it every day, does 
it all the time. I can convince any man that no fertilizer 
factory in the United States can mix a ton of fertilizer on the 
floor with a shovel better than I can. A negro will mix a ton 
an hour and work ten hours a day and it is just as good fer¬ 
tilizer as furnished by the fertilizer companies. This is no 
question of speculation. The agricultural stations in the 
United States and in foreign countries are telling the producer 
that he can manufacture his own fetilizer at from $20 to $25 
a ton and obtain an article that will analyze as high as any 
fertilizer that he can buy. After buying the material you can 
mix it for 10 cents a ton. 
It seems to me that the vital question of fertilization to-day 
is fertilization by indication. When the orange grower gets 
so that he can go into his grove and say whether it needs 
potash, ammonia or phosphoric acid, when he finds out what 
it does need, he has saved one-third to two-thirds of his money, 
Mr. President, it seems to me that the question of fertilization 
by indication is one that should be carried a great way and 
should be better understood. When it gets to the point. 
