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1 Junx, 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 438 
are chickens and ducks. And the farm produce is sent to the Imperial Palace, 
and the father of the two youthful farmers pays for it at the market prices ; 
and if the milk is poor, or the grain inferior, or the eggs and fowls more 
ancient than is desirable, or the vegetables second-rate, then the farmers’ 
Imperial customer is not at all slow in complaining and in lowering the prices 
according to the value of the goods. If the princes, after a spell of work in 
the sweat of their brows, wish for a cup of coffee and some bread and butter, 
then there is the little white kitchen under the thatched roof of the cottage 
attached to their farm. And they may then go and make coffee, and drink it 
out of the nice thick earthenware cups that are kept in the old-fashioned 
cupboard of their whitewashed little sitting-room at the farm. More hard- 
working sons of an emperor and an empire, I have been told, do not exist.”— 
Review of Reviews. 
BUYING MANURES. 
We are often asked by farmers whether they can depend upon the artificial 
manures offered in the market being all that they are stated to be. Our reply 
has always been: Never buy manures without a guaranteed analysis. An 
excellent address on this very subject was lately delivered by Principal Wright, 
of the West of Scotland Agricultural College, under the auspices of the 
Kirkcudbright County Council. The subject was: “Some Hints about 
Buying Manures.” We take the report of this able and instructive address 
from the Scottish Farmer. 
After stating that he had been for ten years engaged with his colleagues 
of the college in carrying out an extensive series of experiments in the 
manuring of the chief farm crops grown in Scotland, the Principal said it had 
occurred to him it might be of some advantage if he were to direct attention 
to some of the results of these experiments, which specially relate to the 
purchase of manures, and to considerations which ought to guide the farmer 
when he was buying manures for his next season’s crops. 
It seemed hardly necessary, speaking in the county of Kirkcudbright, 
where the farmers generally had been accustomed to an extensive use of artificial 
manures for many years, and where, he believed, the subject of manuring was 
_ well understood, that he should suggest that all manures should be purchased 
by guaranteed analysis. It did seem as if it were superfluous to repeat that 
statement ; yet, though it was well known that that should be done, and 
plenty of men, who would not dream of buying a horse without a warranty of 
soundness, did not hesitate to procure manures without inquiring with any 
care into their exact composition and without-asking for a particular specifica- 
tion of their character and properties. In the case of one manure, which had 
come into extensive use in recent years, and which was cheap and very useful 
for many purposes, there was a further guarantee required besides that of 
chemical composition—he referred to basic slag. It was of special importance 
that this manure should be supplied ground into a state of extreme fineness of 
division, and the slag itself was so hard a mineral that if this fineness be not 
attained its value was in a great measure lost, as the larger particles in the soil 
were very insoluble. ‘The standard recommended by agricultural chemists, and 
which had been more or less adopted, was that 80 per cent. of the manures 
should pass through a.sieve which contained 10,000 meshes to the square inch 
—an extremely minute degree—and if they considered how very fine that was 
they would realise that it was impossible to judge of such fineness by the eye 
or the touch. 
No ordinary person could tell whether 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. had 
passed through such a sieve, and it was essential to have a guarantee to that 
effect, and, if they had any doubt as to the reliability of the cuarantor, the 
farmer should see the manure tested. That the value of such phosphate 
depended very much on the fineness of the grinding had been well illustrated 
in an experiment carried out many years ago by Dr. Aitken, of the Highland 
