130. BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
to soluble phosphoric acid, the inherent difficulty of estimating its price 
has been greatly increased in this country by the lack of intelligent 
competition among the manufacturers, by the practice which prevails 
among them of mixing with their superphosphates organic nitrogen- 
ous matters of uncertain value, and by ignorance on the part of many 
buyers as to the real use and mode of action of the fertilizer. 
Professor Johnson, of New Haven, in some of his earlier reports to the 
Secretary of the Connecticut State Board of Agriculture (see, for 
example, his reports for 1858 and for 1869), adopted Professor Stoeck- 
hardt’s German estimate of 124 cents (gold) per pound as the price 
of soluble phosphoric acid. But, in his report for 1870, Johnson was 
induced, by considerations which are discussed at some length in the 
report, to adopt 16} cents (currency), in the belief that this estimate 
was.more just than the other. Practically Professor Johnson substituted 
for his former estimate (12} cents, gold), a price that would be the 
equivalent of it in currency when the premium on coin was 30%. 
This currency price, though proposed by Johnson merely as a tempo- 
rary expedient “for the present, or until more decisive data are acces- 
sible,” has been accepted by so many American chemists who have had 
to do with the analysis of fertilizers that it may be said to have been 
generally adopted in this country. 
But from the following considerations it will appear that at the 
present time (spring of 1874) 161 cents is much too high an estimate 
to put upon the pound of soluble phosphoric acid, and that even the 
old estimate of 12} cents, gold, is hardly tenable. 
The first item of evidence bearing upon the question has been given 
in a paper “On the Cost of importing Superphosphates from Europe,” 
already published in this “ Bulletin,’ page 170, whence it appears that 
soluble phosphoric acid may be imported into Boston from England at 
a cost of 124 cents, per pound, currency. 
The second item consists in the offers of a responsible New York 
dealer in fertilizers * to sell superphosphates either in New York or in 
Boston at prices which would make the pound of soluble phosphoric 
acid come at 12} cents. 
* Mr. Geo. E. White, 160 Front Street, New York. 
+ The details of these offers are as follows: Mr. White will sell, in ten- 
ton lots, a superphosphate yielding 10% of soluble phosphoric acid at $25.00 per 
ton of 2000 lbs., packed at his expense, either in bags or barrels, and delivered 
free on board any vessel for a New England port, sailing out of New York; or he 
