394 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
ovr soils stand in urgent need. These German fertilizers will really 
set free here in America, for agricultural use, a large amount of wood- 
ashes that have hitherto been used for making potashes which were 
consumed in the arts. Ever since the first settlement of the country 
American potashes have been an important article of exportation. 
But it is plain that this exportation must greatly diminish, even if it 
does not altogether cease, in view of the inexhaustible supply of pot- 
ash salts that are readily obtainable at the German mines, — not only 
the mines at Stassfurt, but those in other localities that have been 
discovered more recently. Both potashes and pearlashes can be 
readily and cheaply prepared from the Stassfurt ‘salts. They are so 
prepared already in large quantities, and this fact is doubtless one 
main reason why the price of American potashes is now so low in the 
home market. There is little doubt but that when the use of the Ger- 
man potashes has once become tolerably well established the demand 
for them will rapidly increase, to the disadvantage of the American 
article. Any manufactured product which, like the German potashes, 
is made from materials which, besides being abundant and cheap, are 
themselves pure,* or of definite and constant composition, can naturally 
be made of more uniform composition, and in the long run cheaper and 
better than the potash obtained from wood-ashes, which is a material 
notoriously liable to wide variations in composition, particularly as 
regards the proportion of what may be called its saline impurities. 
As a matter of course, it will take some time to oust American pot- 
ashes from the markets of the world. The process of depression will 
be intermittent and gradual, and the price of our potashes will doubtless 
be subject to considerable fluctuations for some years to come. As 
regards pearlash, indeed, which is, comparatively speaking, a pure 
chemical substance, the contest will be short. But there are scores 
of practical receipts, formule, and processes in the arts in which the 
operator is directed to use American potashes, and in which long 
experience has led him to believe that the use of American potashes 
is essential to success. . It is not easy to eradicate prejudices such as 
these, and it ought not to be. But there can be no doubt that they 
must finally give way to more intelligent practices. The history of 
* Specially high grades of chloride of potassium, containing respectively 
95 @ 96% and 98 @ 99% of the pure salt, are prepared at Stassfurt expressly for 
the manufacture of potashes, and of chlorate and chromate of potash. 
