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New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 159 
Recent quotations show that potash as high-grade muriate can 
be landed in Geneva, by the ton, at not exceeding 41 cents per 
pound, and nitrogen as nitrate of soda, at 152 cents per pound, 
and soluble phosphoric acid at 5 cents per pound. 
At these prices our average fertilizer would cost $21.77 per 
ton instead of $25.80, and there would be a saving of $10.48 per 
ton, which would well pay for the cost of mixing. 
This matter of the possible saving to the farmer in the cost of 
the commercial fertilizers which he uses is urged upon his atten- 
tion, not because there is reason to think he is being defrauded 
by manufacturers and dealers, for, conducted as this great indus- 
try is, there is reason to believe that the necessary expenses 
attending the business are so numerous and in the aggregate so 
great that the apparent difference between the first cost to the 
manufacturer and the price at which the product reaches the 
consumer dwindles to a very narrow margin of actual profit. 
But while it is obvious that there is room for a very consider- 
able saving in cost provided a few enterprising farmers unite and 
mix their own fertilizers; there is, in such a course, reason to 
believe that a far greater intelligence will soon be manifest in the 
study of the general principles underlying this question of the 
use of fertilizers. Besides, also, the farmers who _buy their raw 
fertilizing constituents and mix them will be certain as to the 
character of the mixture which they use and able, therefore, the 
more intelligently to determine whether its results justify its 
continued use or appear to demand a modification. 
At the present time potash salts, muriate, sulphate or kainit of 
various degrees of purity, sulphate of ammonia, nitrate of soda, 
superphosphates, ground bone, dried blood, fish scrap and tank- 
age, can be bought as readily and with as little danger of fraud as 
can salt, soap or sugar, but this is by no means true of the so-called 
mixed fertilizers found in the market, since the manufacturers are 
unwilling to place confidence in their customers and tell them 
what they have to sell. It would seem that this policy would at 
once cause every one making mixed fertilizers to prepare their 
own, even were they todo so at greater cost rather than at a 
saving. 
To-day anyone who may desire can buy in quantity powdered 
leather, horn and hoof meal and many other products of like 
character, the fertilizing value of which is, to say the least, ques- 
