10 Director’s REPORT OF THE 
sidering a change. The conditions which prevail are the reverse 
of these, however, especially during the summer. Whenever 
hydrant pressure is available it averages less than twenty pounds, 
and at times it is a minus quantity, a condition which often 
causes great inconvenience in laboratory work and especially in 
running the refrigerating machine, besides being practically use- 
less for fire purposes. It seems desirable for your board to con- 
sider whether any improvement in our water supply is possible. 
INSPECTION OF FERTILIZERS AND FEEDING STUFES. 
The Legislature of 1899 made two enactments which both 
modified and enlarged the inspection work of the Station. 
The Fertilizer Law was so amended as to require the payment 
of a license fee of $20 on each brand of commercial fertilizers 
sold or offered for sale in the State, thus bringing New York into 
line with the other twenty-eight states in which fertilizer laws 
exist. ‘The money received from such fees is to be devoted to 
paying the expenses of inspection, which renders unnecessary 
the appropriation heretofore made by the state for this purpose. 
In 1898 the number of brands of fertilizers registered at the Sta- 
tion by manufacturers was 2,226, and it now seems probable that 
in 1899 it will fall to less than 500. This decrease is not caused 
wholly by the imposition of license fees, but without question is 
due in part to the formation of a fertilizer combination or trust. 
Some have thought that the advance in prices is also the result 
of the exaction of license fees, but this surely cannot be so, be- 
cause the total annual expense of such fees to the fertilizer in- 
dustry will not exceed an average of six cents per ton on the 
quantity of goods sold. 
Other conditions are responsible for the increased cost to the 
farmer of his commercial plant food. 
A new law, quite similar in its provisions and operation to the 
amended fertilizer law, the author of which is the Hon. D. P. 
Witter, was also enacted for the control and inspection of con- 
