3812 ReporT OF THE CHEMIST OF THE 
~ sample No. 2288 is rather low in potash and much below the 
average for phosphoric acid. Nos. 2292 and 2434 are very good 
unleached Canada ashes. 
I believe it plainly the duty of our State to enact a fertilizer 
control law to protect the farmers against imposition on the part 
of those few unscrupulous dealers who now and then put upon 
the markets fertilizers which fall below the guarantee. The cost 
of the enforcement of such a law would be many times saved to 
the farmers. It would drive from the market spurious goods and 
raise the standard of those offered for sale. Such a law would 
revert to the benefit of the honest manufacturers and would receive 
their cordial support. 
During the past year, in the case of two manufacturers at least, 
their fertilizers have been found considerably below what they 
should be, but one of them offers an explanation for their goods 
being below the guarantee, although the farmers were the parties 
to suffer by the lack of proper care. How extensive the sale of 
inferior goods is throughout the State I can not’ say, as only a 
few fertilizers are analyzed, and there is no record made of the 
sales in the State. One sample of so-called “ corn fertilizer,” sent 
by parties outside of the State, contained neither nitrogen, phos- 
phoric acid nor potash in any appreciable quantities. Whether 
this product is being offered for sale I am not informed, but its 
worthlessness as a fertilizer is at once apparent. 
We have been repeatedly asked by farmers and farmers’ clubs 
to analyze fertilizers for them that they might feel sure they were 
not being defrauded, they offering to bear the necessary expense 
of analysis, or, if we could not do the work, to name some reliable 
chemist who would. This should not be, for the State can do this 
work at a nominal cost. So far as possible we have complied with 
the request without charge to the parties, but we have neither the 
means, laboratory facilities nor force for meeting this urgent and 
fast-growing demand on the part of the farmers, and have been 
obliged to refuse many of their requests, as precedence, with our 
limited quarters, must be given to regular Station work. 
