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 iiiililliiiiiiiliii: 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 AGRICULTURAL 
 
 COLLEGE 
 
 Source 
 
 36 
 
 V. I 
 
CARD 
 
PAICPHLETS 
 
 OH 
 
 SOILS 
 
 Volume 1 
 
43 / 
 
 v,/ 
 
Atwater, W. 0. Co-operatiye experimenting 
 as a means of studying the effects of 
 fertilizers and the feeding capacities of 
 plants, 
 
 Bowker, W, H. Levi Stockhridge and the 
 Stockbridge principle of plant feeding, 
 
 Bowker, W,, H» The prohlem of fertility in 
 the middle West, 
 
 Collingwood, H* Y/, A full review* of 
 
 chemicals and clover 
 
 jj 
 Curry, B. E, and Smith, T. 0. A study of 
 
 soil potassium. 
 
 Plagg, C. 0, Experimental work conducted at 
 the Rhode Island Experiment Station with 
 the nitrate of soda or Chile salt-peter 
 as a fertilizer upon acid soils. 
 
 Q German Kali Works, Home mixing of fertilizers 
 
 Massey, ¥, P* A farmer's experience with lime 
 
 Meyers, W, S, The home mixing of fertilizers 
 
 Palmer, T, G, Indirect "benefits of sugar-beet 
 culture. . 
 
 Stevens, P, L. Studies in soil bacteriology, 
 
 1. Nitrification in soils and in solutions j 
 
 2, Ammonif ica^i on in soils and solutions 
 
 Summers, L» L Fixation of atmospheric nitrogeni 
 
 Warner, I. The position of lime in the chemistr 
 of the soil 
 
 Whitney, M, Soil investigations 
 
 V/ood, R, S, The soil considered as a separate 
 and distinct department of nature 
 

 X i .S,Q(ti^ , JUN2-1913 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE EXPERIMENTING 
 
 AS A MEANS. OF 
 
 STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF FERTILIZERS 
 
 FEEDING CAPACITIES OF PLANTS. 
 
 By PEOF. W. O. ATWATER. 
 
 WASHINGTOlvr: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 1882. 
 
FEKTILIZERS. 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE EXPERIMENTING 
 
 AS A MEANS OF 
 
 STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF FERTILIZERS 
 
 FEEDING CAPACITIES OF PLANTS. 
 
 By PEOF. W. O. ATWATER. 
 
 WASHINGTOT^j 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 
 1882. 
 
Department of Agriculture, 
 
 Washington, D. C, March 27, 1882. 
 Sib : I submit for your consideration the following suggestions with, 
 regard to plants and fertilizers, wliich were laid before this department 
 by Professor Atwater at the agricultural convention held here in January 
 last. 
 
 I consider it very important that these suggestions should be put to 
 a practical test, and I shall feel under great obligations if you will 
 establish a series of experiments upon the plants and fertilizers herein 
 enumerated, and will submit a report thereon to the department with 
 as much care and elaboration as you can without interfering with your 
 duties or with the work which you have assigned yourself. 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 GEO. B. LOEIN^G, 
 Commissioner of Agriculture. 
 
 t ' V^^i^^^^ 
 
 -(y?-z>C 
 
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 I . 
 
CO-OPERATIVE EXPERIMENTING 
 
 MEANS OE STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF FERTILIZERS AND THE 
 FEEDING CAPACITIES OF PLANTS. 
 
 By Pkof. W. O. Atwater. 
 
 banners, from Canada to Texas, are spending millions upon millions 
 of dollars every year for guano, fish scrap, ammoniated superphos- 
 l^hates, nitrate of soda, and the like. Ostensibly, they are buying the 
 fertilizers at from $20 to 1100 \)er ton. Actually, they are buyiug nitro- 
 gen at from 15 to 40 cents per pound. But need, the farmer spend so 
 much for nitrogen? Or migbt he use more with profit? These are 
 questions that no professor of agriculture can answer. Indeed, no 
 chemist or, botanist to-day can so much as tell him how the different 
 plants he cultivates stand related to nitrogen, for what ones he must 
 buy it, and what ones he may use in his rotation to gather it from na- 
 ture's stores and furnish it to him without money and without price save 
 the cost of tillage. 
 
 The question of the nitrogen supply is only one of a great many whose 
 solution is most urgently demanded. We must know how to feed our 
 plants, or go without food ourselves. We need more light. Some must 
 come from the laboratory and the greenhouse ; some must be sought in 
 the field. 
 
 Field experiments rationally planned, carefully carried out, faithfully 
 reported, and interpreted wirh the aid of the most advanced science, 
 will carry us far toward finding out many of these things which we so 
 much want to know. If along with these we can have proper studies, 
 chemical and physical, of the soils experimented upon, analyses of the 
 plants produced, and in addition pot experiments whose conditions can 
 be definitely known and controlled, and especially if we can work 
 together we may hope for the information we need. 
 
 Five years ago, while director of the Connecticut Agricultural Exper- 
 iment Station, I suggested some field experiments with fertilizers to be 
 carried out by farmers for the purpose of studying the needs of their 
 soils and the best materials to supply them. The outgrowth of these, 
 in the form of extended series of experiments during four succ(>ssive 
 seasons, has been stated briefly in the American Agriculturist^ and, in 
 more detail, in the Eeports of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture 
 
 3 
 
for 1877, 1878, 1879, and 1880. The experiments of 1881 have not yet 
 been published in detail, but a few of the more important results will 
 be given herewith. 
 
 With the sets of experimental fertilizers were sent blanks on which 
 any who should choose were invited to send rei)orts of their exijeriments. 
 Nearly three hundred experiments have been reported. They come 
 from colleges, exi^eriment stations, and individual farmers in all the 
 States east, and from some west of the Mississippi, and from several of 
 the British provinces. The quality of the work as indicated by the re- 
 ports is most gratifying. 
 
 The experiments have been of two classes. The first, which may be 
 called general experiments, are of a simpler sort, and intended primarily 
 for soil tests, involve the use of eight or more different kinds and mix- 
 tures of fertiliziug materials containing nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and 
 potash. The second class, the "special nitrogen experiments", have been 
 of more complic ited character, and have had for their object the study ot 
 the feeding capacities of some of our more common cultivated plants, 
 with special reference to the nitrogen supply. 
 
 It is to these latter experiments that attention is especially invited 
 here. 
 
 THE FEEDING CAPACITIES OF PLANTS. 
 
 The experiments we are discussing bring us face to face 'g^ith one of 
 the most imi)ortant jjroblems with which agricultural chemistry has to 
 deal, and at the same time throw some new light upon it- I refer to 
 what may, perhaps, be most properly called the feeding capacities of 
 plants, their power of gathering their supplies of food from soil and air, 
 and the effects of the artificial supply of different ingredients of plant- 
 food upon their growth. 
 
 A vast deal of experience in the laboratory and in the field bears con- 
 current testimony to the fact, though we are still deplorably in the dark 
 as to how or why it is so, that ditferent kinds of plants have different 
 capacities for making use of the stores of food that soil and air contain. 
 Of the ingredients of plant food in our soils, the most important, because 
 the most costly, is nitrogen. Leguminous crops, like clover^ do somehow 
 or other gather a good supply of nitrogen where cereals, such as wheat, 
 barley, rye, and oats would half starve for lack of it, and this in the face 
 of the fact that leguminous plants contain a great deal of nitrogen, and 
 cereals relatively little. Hence a heavy nitrogenous manuring may pay 
 well for wheat and be in large j)art lost on clover. 
 
 NEED OF MORE INFORMATION. 
 
 Hitherto we have been compelled to rely mainly upon EuroiDcan in- 
 vestigations for our facts regarding the nutrition of plants and the ac- 
 tion of manures. Our information is incomplete, and even the foremost 
 teachers may give us wrong counsel. 
 
 Dr. J. B. Lawes, of Eothamsted, England, unquestionably the fore- 
 
most field experimenter in the world, in writing, in 1873, to the treas- 
 urer of the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, 
 said: "The best possible manure for all graminaceous crops — wheat, 
 barley, maize (corn), oats, sugar-cane, rice, and pasture grass — is a mix- 
 ture of superphosphate and nitrate of soda. * * * Potash is gen- 
 erally found in sufficient quantities in soils, and the artificial supply is 
 not required." In more than half of our experiments with corn, and in 
 nearly all with potatoes, the crops have been materially aided by pot- 
 ash salts, and without potash in the fertilizer they have often failed. 
 The mixture which Dr. Lawes regards as "the best possible manure" 
 for corn was sometimes very useful and sometimes brought almost no 
 return. The potash, which his experience in England led him to con- 
 sider superfluous, was here, in many cases, the most necessary of all the 
 tertiliziug ingredients. 
 
 Several years ago the professor of agiculture of one of our leading 
 agricultural colleges i)roposed a series of formulas for different crops. 
 With the rest was one for corn, which, with a moderate proportion of 
 ]iotash and a small amount of phosphoric acid, supplied nitrogen at the 
 rate of 64 pounds, and at a cost of over $15 per acre. Later, a well- 
 known writer upon agricultural science has enthusiastically advocated 
 the culture of corn with chemicals, recommending for the puri)Ose, and 
 using in an extensive series of experiments upon his own farm, a fertil- 
 izer which supplied nitrogen at tbe rnte of 90 pounds, and at a cost of 
 $L8 to $20 per acre. Both of these gentlemen thus assumed that to raise 
 corn successfully would require large and costly supplies of niti"Ogen. 
 Tbe question whether corn can gather its own nitrogen, like clover, or 
 demands an artificial supply, like wheat, whether it is an "exhausting" 
 or a "renovating" crop, has been much discussed. Upon its answer de- 
 pends the success of corn-growing in our older States. The experiments 
 referred to bear emphatic testimony upon this point. The corn has al- 
 most uniformly refused to respond to nitrogen in fertilizers, and persists 
 in getting on well without any artificial supply. But it has been largely 
 benefited by phosphoric acid, and often by jjotash. The formulas above, 
 with their large and excessively expensive amounts of nitrogen, would, 
 in nearly every case, have involved great waste of both fertilizer and 
 money. 
 
 EXPERIMENTS UPON THE EFFECTS OF NITROGI^ENOUS FERTILIZERS. 
 
 One of the ways in which co-operative field experiments may aid in 
 the solution of these problems may be illustrated by citing some of the 
 details of the series of experiments upon the effect of nitrogen in fer- 
 tilizers which were referred to above, and which have been performed by 
 a number of professors in agricultural colleges and practical farmers, 
 with wliat seems to me most gratifying success. 
 The specific questions to be studied may be stated thus: 
 1st. How do the plants experimented with get on with the "mineral" 
 fertilizers, such as are suj)plied by superphosphates and potash salts? 
 
2d. More especially, bow do they respond to nitrogen when added, in 
 different forms and amounts, to the mineral fertilizers'? 
 
 od. And ftually, what inferences may we draw as to the feeding capaci- 
 ties of the plants, their power to gather their food from soil and air, and 
 llie effects of ditferent raateiials upon their growth, especial reference 
 being made to the nitrogen supply? 
 
 I'^or the systematic study of these questions a special "nitrogen ex- 
 periment" was devised in 1878, and conducted by several gentlemen. 
 Similar series were repeated in 1879, and with some variations in 1880 
 and 1881. 
 
 The idea was to compare the effects of mineral fertilizers (superphos- 
 phate an I potash salt) alone, and the same with nitrogen in different 
 amounts and lorms;. The plan is explained in the following extract from 
 a circular sent to the experimenters : 
 
 The Ghjcct of (his experiment is to test the effects of nitrogenous fertilizers in differ- 
 ent anion nts and combinations npon the growth of the plant, and inlereuti;dly its 
 cai)acity to gather its nitrogen Ironi natural sources. 
 
 The Ferfilizers. — The ingredients and amounts are such as are used in ordinary pra,c- 
 tice, phosphoric acid and potash being supplied in about the proportions that occur 
 in a, corn crop of fifty or sixty bushels, and nitrogen in one-third, two-thirds, and full 
 amount in same crop. 
 
 Forms of Nitrogen. — The ni.trogen is supplied as nitric acid in nitrate of soda; as 
 ammonia in sulphate of ammonia, and as organic nitrogen in dried blood. 
 
 QuaniUles of Nitrogen. — The nitrogen is supplied at the rate of twenty-four X)Ounds 
 per acre in " one-third ration"; forty-eight pounds jiev acre in "two-thirds ration"; 
 and seventy-two jjounds per acre in "full ration ". 
 
 Arrangement of Plots and Fertilizers. — The ingredients are supplied as: 
 
 _,,.,„ ..,. C Group I. Nos. i — 3. each by itself. > Thus testing the effects of ingredients sep.a- 
 
 Jr-artial lertuizers, ^ (j ,.^,„p ji;_ jjos. 4—6. Two by two. i rately, and capacity of soil. 
 
 f Group III. Ifos. 7 — 9. Kitrogen as nitric acid] 
 
 I in nitrate of sodi. 
 r. 1 4- f ^-T I Group IV. Nos. 10 — 12. Xitrogen as ammonia I Nitrogen in one-third, two- 
 
 Lcm^jlCLe lertuizers s in sulphate of ammonia. ( thirds, full ration. 
 
 1 Group V. Nos. 13—15. Nitrogen as organic 
 
 \ nitrogen in dried blood. J 
 
 The fertilizers were supplied, in part at cost, and in part gratui- 
 tously, by the Mapes Formula and Peruvian Guano Company of New 
 York. Especial thanks are due to Mr. 0. V. Mapes, without whose in- 
 terest and enthusiasm, as well as counsel and substantial help, the enter- 
 prise could not have succeeded as it has. 
 
 The full details of the experiments are to appear in a report of the 
 United States Department of Agriculture. The tables herewith give 
 an outline of results of some of the experiments of the last season and 
 will serve as illustrations. The figures are, however, much condensed 
 and many interesting details are omitted. 
 
 Table I gives the results of several experiments with cotton, corn, 
 and potatoes. The unfavorable weather which affected the majority of 
 the experiments, has reduced the yield materially in most of these. 
 In several the effects of unevenness of soil are manifest ; on some the 
 supply of available plant food in the soil was evidently so great as to 
 ol>8cure the action of the fertilizers. Those of Mr. Xewton with corn 
 
and Mr. Manning with clover, show marked exceptions to what seems to 
 be the common rule, that these crops are not greatly aided by nitrogenous 
 fertilizers. Indeed, all illustrate forcibly our need of more experiment- 
 ing. 
 
 Table II shows an experiment on an older and slightly diiierent 
 schedule. It is interesting both because of its sharply-defined results 
 and as an illustration of the excellent work ordinary farmers do in this 
 line. 
 
 Table I. Kitrogen Experiments, 1881. 
 
 I. Prof. W. C. Stubbs, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College, 
 
 Auburn, Ala.: 
 Soil — Worn-out pasture; level, upland, sandy, light, well-drained. 
 Siohsoil — Reddish yellow clay. Weather — Dry and unfavorable. 
 
 II. Edward Hicks, Old Westbury, N. Y. : 
 
 Soil — Level, sandy loam, light, dry. Subsoil — Yellow loam. Pre- 
 vious crop — Corn. Weather — ^Dry and unfavorable. 
 
 III. PiiOF. C. L. Ingersoll, Purdue University, La Fayette, Ind. : 
 Soil — Upland, level, black, similar to prairie, sticky when wet, 
 
 bakes when dry; dry, well drained. Subsoil — Gravel. Previous 
 crop — Corn. Weather — Very dry and unfavorable. 
 
 IV. Prof. Samuel Johnson, Michigan Agricultural College, Lansing, 
 
 Mich. : 
 Soil — Level, upland, sandy loam, light, drained dry. Subsoil — 
 Gravelly. Previous crop — Corn. Weather — Dry, cold, unfavor- 
 able. 
 
 V. W. C. Newton, Durham, Conn.: 
 
 Soil — Old meadow, hill land, dark loam. Svhsoil — Moist. Weather — 
 Unfavorable. 
 
 VI. J. W. Pierce, West Millbury, Mass. : 
 
 Soil — Worn-out grass land, upland, nearly level, clay loam, light, 
 dry. Subsoil — Gravelly, but some clay. irm//ier— Cold and un- 
 favorable. 
 
 VII. C. E. Thorne, farm manager, Ohio State University, Colum- 
 
 bus, O. : 
 Soil — Level, upland, clayey loam, " drift formation" from Huron 
 shale, compact, wet before draining. Subsoil — Similar to sur- 
 face soil, retentive. Previous crop — Corn, with stable manure. 
 Weather — Severe drouth. 
 
 VIII. J. M. Manning, Taunton, Mass. : 
 
 Soil — Upland, sandy loam, loose. Subsoil — Yellow sand. Previous 
 crops — Potatoes and corn. Weather — Unfavorable. 
 
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10 
 
 The variety of results in the different experiments is very striking. 
 Mr. W. I. Bartholomew, of Putnam, Conn., has been conducting thenitro- 
 gen experiments with corn and i)otatoes for three years. In every trial 
 every plot which has received phosphoric acid has given a more or less 
 satisfactory return, aud every one without phosphoric acid has failed. 
 Nitrogen and potash have each increased the yield of corn, but neither 
 lias brought enough iucrease to pay its cost, and the loss has been larger 
 or smaller as more or less was used. Potatoes, on the other hand, have 
 responded profitably to all the ingredients. 
 
 Mr. C. Sage, of Middletown, Conn., has had a very different experience. 
 Mtrogen has proved as inefficient on his land as on Mr. Bartholomew's. 
 Phosphoric acid, which Mr. Bartholomew finds so effective, lielps him 
 but little, while i>otash is decidedly the regulating ingredient, the corn 
 ] esponding uniformly and largely to every application of i)otash salt. 
 One hundred and fifty pounds per acre of muriate of potash, costing 
 $3.50, makes the diff'erence between corn so poor as to be hardly worth 
 the husking, and CO bushels or more of beautiful shelled corn and a fine 
 growth of stalks. 
 
 In the experiment of Mr. C. Newton, of Durham, Conn., given in 
 Table I, we have a still different result. Potash is as useless as in Mr. 
 Bartholomew's experiment. Phosphoric acid does no more good here 
 than with Mr. Sage. But the nitrogen to which both these gentlemen's 
 corn paid so little heed is on Mr. Newton's soil uniformly efficient. The 
 corn responds largely and profitably to nitrogen in every form and on 
 every plot, and the yield rises and falls regularly with the amount of 
 nitrogen applied; I should add that in each of these cases the results are 
 those not of a single, but of two or three years' trials. Mr. Newton's 
 experience, however, seems to be an exception and an unusual one. 
 Instances in which the nitrogen is absolutely harmful are much more 
 frequent. Professor Thome's in Table I is such an one. The corn here 
 suffered from very severe drought, but Professor Thorne writes me 
 that he has observed the same thing in favorable seasons, and several 
 other reports tell the same story. Mr. J. W. Sanborn, the well-known 
 jarm superintendent and experimenter of the New Hampshire Agricul- 
 tural College, has a case in which sulphate of ammonia helped the corn 
 materialy the first season, did no good the second, aud "utterly demor- 
 alized" it the third. 
 
 On soils that are rich, or even in only fairly ^ood condition, nitrogen- 
 ous fertilizers, like other manures, often show very little effect. Such 
 seems to be the case in Professor Henry's experiment in Table I. 
 
 EFFECTS OF NITROGrENOUS FERTILIZERS UPON CORN. 
 
 Estimating a bushel of corn, with its cobs and stalks, to contain 1^ 
 of nitrogen, and to be worth 80 cents, the effects of the nitrogenous 
 fertilizers in the special and in the general experiments may be summa- 
 rized as follows, remembering that the superphosphate and potash salt, 
 
11 
 
 "mixed minerals," supplied the amounts of pbosphoricacid and potash, 
 in a crop of not far from 55 or 60 bushels, which would also contain 
 about the 72 pounds of nitrogen. 
 
 In the general experiments of the mixture of 300 pounds superphos- 
 phate and 200 pounds muriate of i)otash brought on the average of fifty- 
 three experiments, about 43^ bushels of shelled corn per acre. The 
 special experiments, however, seem to me a fairer test of what the fer- 
 tilizei's may do, because, while made in all sorts of weather and on 
 worn-out soils, they were nearly all on soils and in latitudes lit for corn, 
 as many of the general experiments were not. In these the mixture of 
 300 pounds superphosphate and 150 pounds of potash salt, which can 
 be bought for $8.25, brought, on the average, 43 bushels of shelled 
 corn i)er acre. Omitting Mr. ISTcwton's experiment, the results of which 
 are very exceptional, the average is 44J bushels. 
 
 The experitoents of the four seasons bear almost unanimous testimony 
 to two things : The corn was helped but little by nitrogen in the fertil- 
 izers; and it gathered a good deal from natural sources. The increase 
 of crop and of nitrogen in the crop will appear more clearly if we look 
 at it another way. 
 
 In number of 
 trials. 
 
 Withn 
 Amount per acre. 
 
 itrogen. 
 
 Contained in crop 
 of— 
 
 The average in- 
 crease of com 
 was. 
 
 The increase of nit- 
 rogen in the ciop 
 was. 
 
 95 
 
 76 
 42 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 24 
 48 
 72 
 
 Bushels. 
 18 
 36 
 54 
 
 Bushels. 
 3.6 
 5.3 
 6.6 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 4.8 
 7.1 
 8.8 
 
 Or, estimating the results in dollars and cents : 
 
 In trials, total 
 number. 
 
 With nitrogen, 
 amounts. 
 
 Costing. 
 
 The nitrogen 
 ])ai(l for it- 
 self in trials. 
 
 The nitrogen 
 failed to pay 
 for itself in 
 tiials. 
 
 The average loss 
 in till- several 
 trials was. 
 
 95 
 
 76 
 42 
 
 24 lbs. 
 48 lbs. 
 72 lbs. 
 
 $5 50 
 11 OO 
 16 50 
 
 21 
 13 
 4 
 
 74 
 03 
 38 
 
 $2 62 
 
 6 76 
 
 11 22 
 
 The only cases in which the largest rations were profitable were in 
 the experiments of Mr. Newton. 
 
 The above calculations of pecuniary loss and gain of course apply only 
 to those regions where corn is dear. Bnt even at these rates the nitrogen 
 increased the crop enough to pay its costs in only 38 trials out of 213. 
 The pecuniary loss rose and fell with the amount of nitrogen used. 
 With mineral fertilizers alone the crop gathered, by the above estimates, 
 some 60 jjounds of nitrogen per acre. 
 
 The important fact, however, is this : The corn plant has in these trials 
 shown itself capable of getting on and bringing fair yields with small 
 
12 
 
 amounts of the less costly mineral fertilizers, even in the worn-out soils 
 of the Eastern States. With this help it has gathered its nitrogen from 
 natural sources, and holds it readily to be fed out on the farm and re- 
 turned in the form of manure for other crops. In other words, the ex- 
 jjeriments thus far imply that corn has, somehow or other, the power to 
 gather a great deal of nitrogen from soil or air, or both ; that in this 
 respect it comes nearer to the legumes than the cereals ; that, in short, 
 corn i.iay be classed with the "renovating" crops. If this is really so, 
 and this can be settled only by continued exi)erimenting, then our great 
 cereal, instead of being simi^ly a consumer of the fertilitj" of our soils, 
 may be used as agent for their restoration. 
 
 FEEDINGr CAPACITIES OF OTHER CROPS. 
 
 The results of the experiments with other crops were briefly sum- 
 marized in an account given in the last report of the Connecticut 
 board of agriculture, as follows : 
 
 Taking all in all, tlie potatoes responded well to the suiierpliosphate, the potash salt, 
 and the nitrogenons fertilizers, and the " complete fertilizer" has been most profitable 
 in almost every case where the weather permitted fair growth. None of the other 
 crops, except, perhaps, turnips, have shown such uniformly beneficial results from all 
 the materials. 
 
 The experiments indicate very decidedly that the potato lilaiit differs from many 
 others in respect to the eftect of th.^se fertilizing materials upon its growth, and imply 
 that it has less capacity than corn for gathering an adequate supply of food from nat- 
 ural sources. It seems to demand a full and immediately available sujiply of nourish- 
 ment for its successful growth. 
 
 Concerning the other crops, the data at hand are too meager to warrant any gen- 
 eral conclusions. * * * In general, however, the experiments accord with the 
 common notion that makes superphosphate almost a specific for turnips. But they 
 imply that even when the suiJcrphosphate is supplied in abundance, the turnip is not 
 usually able to gather enough of the other materials for a full yield unless they are 
 close at hand in readily available forms. 
 
 EXPEEI10]NTS WITH COTTON. 
 
 Professor Stubbs' experiment with cotton is extremely interesting. 
 Phosphoric acid has great, and potash very little, effect. JSTitrogen 
 increases the crop, but that in cotton-seed meal is as useful, or more so, 
 than in the other and more costly materials, nitrate of soda, sulphate of 
 ammonia, and dried blood. This is only one of a number of experi- 
 ments which Professor Stubbs has made, upon whose results, vadded to 
 his general experience, he bases a number of important conclusions, 
 among which are the following : 
 
 1. Our [Alabama] soils, which result from the disintegration of metamorphic rocks, 
 principally feldspathic and hornblendic, need a little nitrogen, much phosphoric acid, 
 and no potash for cotton. 
 
 2. Our great want, and it seems to prevail through the older cotton States (except 
 the black cretaceous belt of Alabama, which has not been thoroughly tested), is soluble 
 phosphoric acid. On worn-out soils a small amount of nitrogen is required. A fertil- 
 izer with 3 per cent, of nitrogen and 10 per cent, of soluble phosphoric acid, meets 
 the demand very well. 
 
13 
 
 3. Phosphoric acid hastens and nitrogen retards the maturity of the crop. 
 
 4. Cotton seed and cotton-seed meal are as effective as dried blood, sulphate of am- 
 monia, nitrate of soda, or other nitrogenous fertilizers, and far cheaper and more eco- 
 nomical. 
 
 To what extent and under what conditions such princij)les as these 
 are applicable in the culture of cotton and' other crops, are matters of 
 vital importance in Southern agriculture. The usefulness of systematic 
 experiments to test them needs no argument. 
 
 EFFECTS OF PHOSPHORIC ACID IN DIFFERENT FORMS OF COMBINA- 
 TION. 
 
 The nitrogen supply is only one of the many questions whose solution 
 is of vital importance to our agriculture. The relations of phosphoric 
 acid, iJOtash, and other ingredients of plant food, whose lack in our soils 
 we seek to supply, at great expense, with j)hosphates and potash salts, 
 demand equally full and thorough study. 
 
 Treating the insoluble phosphate of bone or mineral phosphate with 
 acid to make sujjerphosphate is expensive. Soluble phosphoric acid 
 costs us from 12 to 15 cents or more per pound, while we can buy it in 
 the insoluble forms for from 4 to 6 or 7 cents. The general theory is that 
 superphosphate is necessary, but still, somehow or other, many of us 
 have the ieeling that, in many cases at least, the cheaper insoluble phos- 
 phates would do as well ; that fine grinding might serve instead of super- 
 phosphating; and that there are many cases in which the cheaj) rock 
 phosphates might replace the dearer bone manure. If so, the saving 
 would be immense. 
 
 The Aberdeenshire Agricultural Association of Scotland, through Mr. 
 Thomas Jamieson, F. C. S., its chemist, has been for several years past 
 conducting an extended system of experiments in which have been 
 studied, with other things, the effects of phosphoric fertilizers of differ- 
 ent sorts, alone and associated with nitrogen. 
 
 The results of several years work on five typical varieties of Aber- 
 deen soil in the oidinary state of cultivation are summarized by Mr. 
 Jamieson in the statements. 
 
 1. That phosphates of lime decidedly increase the turnip crop, but that fanners need 
 not trouble themselves to know whether they are of animal or mineral origin. 
 
 2. That soluble phosphate is not superior to insoluble phosphate to the extent that 
 is generally supposed. 
 
 3. That nitrogenous manures have little effect on turnips used alone, but when used 
 ■with insoluble phosphates increase the crop ; that the addition of nitrogen to solu- 
 ble phosphates does not seem to increase the solid or dry matter in the crop ; that 
 there is no material difference between the effects of equal quantities of nitrogen in 
 nitrate of soda and in sulphate of ammonia. 
 
 4. That fineness of division seems nearly as effective in assisting the braird and in- 
 creasing the croj) as the addition of nitrogenous manures. Hence the most economi- 
 cal phosphoric manure for turnips is probably insoluble phosphate of lime, from imj'^ 
 .source, ground down to an impalpable powder. 
 
14 
 
 Mr. G. Clenclon, jr., of Buckner's Station, Va., who has carried out a 
 series of the '^general" experiments above referred to, and taken the 
 opijortnnity to test finely-ground South Carolina phosphate alongside 
 the dissolved bone black, obtained with the raw i)hosphate a yield 
 larger than with superphosphate or stable manure, and nearly as large 
 as with the complete fertilizer. The testimony of a single experiment, 
 of course, must always be questioned; but Mr. Clendon's results have 
 the regularity that characterizes uniform land, and seem to be borne 
 out by other experiments and his general experience. He writes : 
 
 My experiments have been carried on over ten years. In everj-^ year the good effect 
 of the raw phosphate was apparent. * * * The soil is a decomposed gneiss, uui- 
 Ibrmlj' poor, and is a fair sample of hundreds of square miles lying between the base 
 of the Blue Eidge and tide-water in Virginia. # » « j think the experiments 
 should be repeated over a wider country. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a familiar fact that in the neighborhood of 
 Charleston, S. C, where ttie raw phosphate is obtained, its use in the 
 raw state has not become general, and that many attempts elsewhere to 
 introduce insoluble j)hosphates have failed. When, where, and why the 
 different forms of phosphoric acid are in i)lace, are ijroblems that demand 
 thorough investigation. 
 
 WHAT IS NEEDED FOB SUCCESSFUL FIELD EXPERIMENTING. 
 
 Unless I greatly err, one of the chief causes of the failure of so much 
 of the honest and thorough field experimenting that has been done, to 
 accomplish its puri)ose has been that the questions have been too com- 
 l)lex, while the work has not been i)rosecuted far enough to make it all 
 complete. 
 
 It is by selecting specific and narrow questions, and working at them 
 systematically and continuously, that we shall secure the most valuable 
 results. There has been too much firing at random. We need to choose 
 I)roper points of attack, be sure of our aim, and concentrate our fire 
 until a breach is made. 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE EXPERIIVIENTING. 
 
 And we need not only to work rightly, but to work together. Experi- 
 ments with a common object on a common plan, conducted by intelligent, 
 careful investigators, in different places, under diflerent but accurately 
 observed and recorded conditions, are needed to bring the results which 
 scientific agriculture so pressingly demands. 
 
 A letter from Professor Henry, of the agricultural department of the 
 University of Wisconsin, says most aj)tly, " What we most need is wi/ow," 
 and dwells upon the imx)ortauce of co-operative field exj>eriments with 
 fertilizers, experiments which shall be ^^ far-reaching^^ in their character. 
 
 Mr. Sanborn, of the Xew Hampshire Agricultural College, in alluding 
 to the fact that most of our agricultural science hitherto has come from 
 Europe, and that we need facts and principles of our own, says of the 
 
15 
 
 ^voik of field experimenting with fertilizers: ''It is of incalculable im- 
 portance to the country," and adds: "The co-operative plan is the only 
 right thing if quick and reliable work is to be done." And unless I 
 greatly err, these gentlemen, who, with numerous others, are showing 
 their faith by their works, are expressing in the words just quoted a 
 general sentiment of the men who to-day are doing most to promote 
 agricultural science in this country. 
 
 Now it seems to me that the way to co-operate is to co operate. The 
 way to get on is to "stay not upon the order of your going, but go." 
 Go wisely, carefully, rationally, slowly if need be — but go. 
 
 The colleges and experiment stations of nine States, and several promi- 
 nent farmers of the same and other States, have already commenced work 
 on the schedule above explained. Six other colleges and stations have 
 made arrangemeuto to commence the same experiments this season, and 
 three others are experimenting on the same question of the etiects of 
 nitrogenous fertilizers, though on somewhat different plans. 
 
 Several State agricultural reports show that the same enterprise is 
 being considered by other official bodies as well. The secretary of the 
 Ohio Board of Agriculture, Mr. Chamberlain, in his last report devotes 
 a number of i)ages to accounts of the nitrogen experiments referred to, 
 and suggests the study of the nitrogen sux)ply for wheat on typical soils 
 in his- State. The last report of the commissioner of agriculture of 
 Virginia recommends similar exj^eriments in that State. Several other 
 State organizations are taking steps in the same direction. Besides all 
 these, there are numbers of intelligent farmers throughout the whole 
 country who are able and will be more than willing to contribute most 
 efficient work. The exi)eriment8 above cited suffice to i^rove this beyond 
 all doubt. 
 
 With the assured co-operation of so many representative men, includ- 
 ing really the majority of the best-known experimenters in the country, 
 the feasibility of co-ox^erative experimenting is no longer a questioji. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 In organizing a system of co-operative experimenting, to which the 
 above address is devoted, one great need is an official and influential 
 center, whence suggestions and plans for work may emanate, and where 
 reports of results may be collated, arranged, and published, and with 
 whose wise aid all can work together. By the espousal of the enterprise 
 by the Agricultural Department at Washington, under its present very 
 efficient management, this want is most happily met. And nothing 
 could be more auspicious for such a union between the department and 
 the best experimenters of the country than the discussions and action 
 of the late convention. 
 
 PLANS FOR EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 In accordance with a request from the Commissioner of Agriculture, 
 I have undertaken, with the aid of several well-known workers in this 
 line, to prepare some i)lans for experiments ', doing so, however, with the 
 feeling that what is wanted is not detailed and inelastic schedules, but 
 rather, outlines which each experimenter can fill in as seems to him most 
 advisable. Every man knows his own circumstances, and every intelli- 
 gent worker has valuable ideas of his own, which others have not. It 
 seems to me that the most effective system will be one which will enable 
 each to develop his own ideas, while we all work together and contribute 
 our results to the common fund. 
 
 KIND OF INVESTIGATIONS THAT ARE NEEDED. 
 
 To get the most complete results we need : 
 
 I. Field experiments, to include — 
 
 a. The culture of plants on plots of land treated with different ma- 
 nures, and careful weighings and measurements of produce. 
 
 b. Where practicable, chemical and x)hysical studies of the soil. 
 
 c. In many cases, chemical analyses of the plants. 
 
 II. Pot expeiiments, in which the conditions can be definitely known 
 and controlled, and the needed studies of soil and plants be carried out 
 with equal or greater convenience and accuracy. 
 
 Indeed, it is safe to say that there ought to be in the various sections 
 of the country chemical and physical surveys of the land in the behalf of 
 agriculture, as there have been topographical and geological surveys 
 in the behalf of other industries and interests. And in fact this is 
 precisely the direction in which we are tending in this experimental 
 work. 
 
 2 A 17 
 
18 
 
 PLANS FOR FIELD EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 The subjects proposed at the Washington convention for co ope ?avive 
 experiments were : 
 
 1. The supply of nitrogen to plants. 
 
 2. The action of phosphoric acid in different forms of combination 
 and in different fertilizing materials upon the growth of i)lants. 
 
 Practically, so far as field experiments are concerned, these two sub- 
 jects reduce themselves to the study of the action of nitrogenous and 
 phosphatic fertilizers. 
 
 The first thing, then, will be to see what materials are to be employed. 
 
 Since similar questions regarding potash will naturally arise, it may 
 be well to include brief suggestions regarding potassic fertilizers. Of 
 course sulphuric acid, lime, and magnesia could be treated in like man- 
 ner it it should hereafter become desirable. 
 
 QUANTITIES OF MATERIALS TO BE , USED. 
 
 To decide what quantities of materials will be best for the purpose is 
 not easy, because of the lack of the very data for which the experiments 
 are, in part, to be made, i^either the proportions which occur in any 
 crops, nor those in farm manures, coidd well serve as a standard. Prob- 
 ably the best plan will be to endeavor to select, as extremes, the smallest 
 and the largest quantities that general experience has brought into ordi- 
 nary use, and arrange intermediate quantities at proper intervals be- 
 tween. 
 
 Nitrogen. — A dressing of 450 pounds of nitrate of soda per acre is 
 jirobably as large as would be apt to be used in this country, in ordi- 
 nary practice, on ordinary crops. At the same time it is no more than 
 has been found profitable in previous nitrogen experiments, and is per- 
 haps as small as would be advisable for the maximum. At IG x^er cent, 
 it would contain 72 pounds of nitrogen. 
 
 Three hundred pounds of an ammoniated superj)hosphate with 3 per 
 cent., or 9 i^ounds, of nitrogen, is not an unusual dressing per acre. As 
 little as 200 pounds, with only C pounds of nitrogen per acre, is a com- 
 mon quantity for cotton, and indeed, for other crops, when applied in 
 the hill or drill or as a supplement to other manures. Six pounds of 
 nitrogen is a very small quantity for an acre of laud. Twelve pounds, 
 which would be contained in 75 pounds of nitrate of soda, would seem 
 to be little enough. StUl, it will be well to provide for as small an 
 amount as is ordinarily used. 
 
 In arranging the rations it would seem best to make the difference 
 between the smaller rations less than that between the larger ones. In 
 the previous nitrogen experiments, three rations, ''one-third," "two- 
 thirds," and "three-thirds," with 24, 48, and 72 pounds of nitrogen per 
 acre, respectively, have been employed. Prefacing these by a "one- 
 twelfth" ration of 6 pounds, and a "one-sixth" ration of 12 x^ounds, we 
 shall have a series of five: 
 
19 
 Sitrogen rations. 
 
 a. Oue-twelftli ration : Nitrate of soda, 38 pounds, witli 6 pounds 
 
 of nitrogen. 
 
 b. Oiie-sixth ration: Mtrate of soda, 75 pounds, with 12 pounds 
 
 nitrogen. 
 
 c. Oue third ration: i^itrate of soda, 150 pounds, with 24 pounds 
 
 nitrogen. 
 
 d. Two-thirds ration: Nitrate of soda, 300 pounds, with 48 pounds 
 
 nitrogen. 
 €. Full ration : Nitrate of soda, 450 pounds, with 72 pounds nitro- 
 gen. 
 
 Of this list, eitlier all or part may be used. Thus on soils or for 
 crops where smaller quantities are in place, a. h. and c. could be em- 
 ployed. Where more nitrogen is wanted, c. d. and e. would be better. 
 If, as is not impossible, experience should show that the smaller rations 
 are too small to be useful, it Avill be a very simple matter to omit them. 
 
 Phouphoric acid. — One hundred pounds of a superphosphate with IG 
 per cent. P2 O5 is as little as would be often used on an acre, while 600 
 pounds with 96 pounds of P2 O5 would be a large dressing. In view of 
 the tact that general experience has led to the employing of much larger 
 quantities of phosphoric acid than of nitrogen, the proportions within 
 this range would be none too large to go with those of nitrogen sug- 
 gested. Doubtless a series of four rations arranged as below would 
 sufidce. 
 
 Fhophoric acid rations. 
 
 a. Cne-sixth ration : 100 pounds superphosphate with 16 pounds 
 
 phosphoric acid. 
 h. One-third ration : 200 jDounds superphosphate with 32 pounds 
 
 phosphoric acid. 
 
 c. Two-thirds ration : 400 pounds superphosphate with 64 pounds 
 
 phosphoric acid. 
 
 d. Full ration : 600 pounds sux^erphosphate with 96 pounds phos- 
 
 phoric acid. 
 
 Fotash. — Many of the popular fertilizing mixtures are calculated to 
 supply very small quantities of potash, not over 17 pounds per acre, 
 while 200 pounds of muriate of potash are often used for a dressing. 
 Taking these as extremes and dividing as before we shall have — 
 
 Potash rations. 
 
 a. One-sixth ration : 33 iDounds muriate of potash with 17 pounds 
 
 potash. 
 1). One-third ration: 67 pounds muriate of potash with 33 pounds 
 
 potash. 
 
20 
 
 c. Two thirds ration : 133 pounds muriate of potash with 67 pounds 
 
 potash. 
 
 d. Full ration : 200 pounds muriate of potash with 100 pounis pot- 
 
 ash, 
 
 Puttingr the above forms together we have rations as follows : 
 
 
 d 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CD 
 
 P. 
 
 e^ 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 G 
 
 o 
 
 i-.-a 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 a, 
 
 V '^ 
 
 fci/ 
 
 J 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 g 
 
 P. 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 c 
 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 P4 
 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Oue-sixtli ration 
 
 75 
 
 ino 
 
 33 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 
 150 
 300 
 450 
 
 200 
 400 
 600 
 
 67 
 i:(3 
 200 
 
 24 
 48 
 72 
 
 32 
 64 
 96 
 
 33 
 
 
 67 
 
 
 100 
 
 . 
 
 
 DUPLICATION OP TESTS. 
 
 Avery great, if not the greatest, obstacle to the success of field experi- 
 ments is the unevenness of soils. The variations in the produce of dif- 
 ferent jdots of apparently uniform land under the same treatment is 
 often very surprising. An experiment in which duplicates agree as 
 closely as could be desired is the exception rather than the rule. Cases 
 in which the differences betwesn plots treated alike are greater than 
 between those treated differently, are^ if anything, more comjuou. 
 
 To get around this difficulty, numerous devices are em])loyed. One is 
 to test the uuiformity of the plots by treating all alike the first year, and, 
 if they vary materially, to either attempt to average duplicates so as to 
 make the differences counterbalance, or to allow for tlie differences in 
 computing the final results. One serious objection to either of these 
 plans is the uncertainty as to the cause of the variation and to whether 
 it will be constant in succeeding years. 
 
 Another plan consists in making the plots long and narrow, so as to 
 equalize the differences. This, though often successful, is not always 
 so. The ideal method vrould be to test the experimental areas by uni- 
 form treatment for a series of years until temporary causes of irregu- 
 larity, such as came from manuring, tillage-, cropping, «&c., were elimin- 
 ated, and to use for exi^eiimeut only such as prove to be intrinsically 
 uniform. 
 
 Where feasible, this latter plan is certainly to be recommended. But 
 if we are to begin an experiment at once, doubtless the best way is to 
 use small ])lots and duplicate the trials by using the same materials on 
 several. This duplicating will test the uniformity and reliability of the 
 whole experiment, and give averages which, when no untoward circum- 
 stances prevent, are pretty sure to be fairly satisfactory and are often 
 perfectly so. 
 
21 
 
 SIZE OF EXPERIjMENTAL PLOTS. 
 
 Ordinarily, plots of eight square rods, one-twentieth acre, each, seem 
 as satisfactory as any. In most cases, two plots of one-twentieth 
 wonld be preferable to one of one-tenth acre. At least, such is the 
 impression left on my mind after looking over the reports of several 
 hundred experiments sent me for examination. Before this exjDerience 
 I was inclined to larger areas, but I have been surprised at the uniform- 
 ity of small plots, when they are long and narrow. Some of the most 
 satisfactory field experiments have been on plots of only four square 
 rods. It is very common to leave a number of plots unmanured to test 
 the uniformity of the soil, but it is a question whether this purpose is 
 not better served by duplicating manured plots, and using not more than 
 two or three unmanured for an ordinary experiment. Thus, for the nitro- 
 gen experiments, the most satisfactory plan I have found has been to 
 leave one unmanured plot on each side of the experimental field, and 
 to frequently duplicate the "basal mixture" of superphosphate and 
 potash salt. 
 
 SPACES BETWEEN THE EXPERIMENTAL, PLOTS. 
 
 Another frequent cause of inaccuracy in field experiments with fer- 
 tilizers is the extension of the roots of the plants of one plot into the soil 
 of the next one, so that the plants feed upon their neighbors' fertilizers. 
 The roots of corn, for instance, extend laterally several feet, and, un- 
 less something is done to prevent^^the plants may get so much material 
 that does not belong to them as to vitiate the results of the experiments. 
 The yield on an unmanured plot between two manured ones is often 
 much larger than on another unmanured plot whose plants have not 
 the fertilizers close at hand to draw upon. The best plan to obviate 
 this is to leave unmanured strips between the experimental plot so wide 
 that the roots will not reach across them. The difficulty can be helloed, 
 of course, by plowing between the plots deep enough to cut the roots. 
 
 NITEOGEN EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 In planning these experiments we need to consider the questions to 
 be studied, the forms and quantities of nitrogen to be used, and tlie 
 most fitting arrangement for the experiments. The following details 
 naturally suggest themselves : 
 
 A. — Questions especially needing Study. 
 
 I. The action of nitrogen in different forms and amounts upon the 
 
 growth of plants under varying conditions of crop, soil, 
 climate, season, &c. 
 
 II. The feeding capacities of different plants as related to nitrogen, i. e., 
 
 their capacities for providing themselves with nitrogen 
 
22 
 
 from natural sources, and for utilizing that furnished in 
 the fertilizers, in so far as these capacities are indicated 
 by effects of the nitrogenous materials ux^on their growth. 
 
 B. — Forms and Amounts of Niteooen and I>riTRoaENOus Fertil- 
 izers. 
 
 I. The most important forms of nitrogen are : 
 
 1. Nitric acid. 
 
 2. Ammonia. 
 
 3. Organic nitrogen. 
 
 II. Among the kinds of fertilizers containing nitrogen in these forms, 
 
 the following are important : 
 
 1. Nitric acid. 3. Organic nitrogen. 
 
 a. Nitrate of soda. a. Dried blood. 
 
 1). Nitrate of potash. 6. Meat scrap. 
 
 2. Ammonia. c. Fish scrap and fish guano. 
 
 a. Sulphate of ammonia. d. Leather scraps. 
 
 III. Quantities, as above named, to wit, "one-twelfth," "one-sixth," 
 
 "one-third," "two-thirds," and "full rations," or G, 12, 24, 
 48, and 72 pounds per acre. 
 
 DETAILED PLANS. 
 
 In the account of nitrogen experinients above (pages 6, 8, and 0) are 
 schedules of the kinds and quantities of fertilizing materials there em- 
 l^loyed. Judging from the results of past experience, however, those 
 schedules would be improved by slightly altering the quantities so as to 
 make them conform with the rations just named, and by enlarging the 
 list of nitrogenous fertilizers to be tested. 
 
 Kinds of Nitrogenous Fertilizers. 
 
 The following will doubtless be to the purpose : 
 
 1. For nitric acid, nitrate of soda, 96 per cent, purity, with 16 per cent, 
 nitrogen. 
 
 2. For ammonia, sulphate of ammonia, with 21 per cent, nitrogen. 
 
 3. For organic nitrogen. 
 
 a. Dried blood (steam dried), with 11 per cent, nitrogen. 
 1). Meat scrap, azotin, with 11 per cent, nitrogen. 
 
 c. Fish guano, with 8 per cent, nitrogen. 
 
 d. Leather scraps (finely pulverized), with 7 per cent, nitrogen. 
 
 4. For nitric acid, ammonia, arid organic nitrogen together, "nitiogen 
 
 mixture," consisting of nitrate of soda, 16 per cent, nitrogen; 
 sulphate of ammonia, 21 per cent, nitrogen, and dried blood 
 11 i)er cent, nitrogen in equal iiarts, and containing 16 per cent,, 
 nitrogen. 
 
23 
 
 Quantities op ISTitrogenous Fertilizers. 
 
 We may plan for each nitrogenous fertilizer a "group" with rations, 
 as above suggested. Thus we may have nitrogen groups with quanti- 
 ties per acre as ioUows : 
 
 Nitrogen Bationa. 
 
 nation. 
 
 NiTEATE OF SODA 
 
 Gkoup 
 
 One twelfth 
 One-sixth . . 
 One-tliird... 
 Two-thii'ds . 
 Pull.. 
 
 Nitrate of 
 soda. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 38 
 
 75 
 150 
 300 
 450 
 
 Sulphate of am- 
 monia Group . 
 
 Eation. 
 
 One-twelfth... 
 
 One-sixth 
 
 One-third 
 
 Two-thirds 
 
 Full 
 
 Sulphate of 
 ammonia. 
 
 Poundg, 
 
 29 
 
 57 
 114 
 228 
 343 
 
 Dried bloou 
 Group ' 
 
 Eation. 
 
 One-twelfth 
 One-sixth . . 
 One-third . . 
 Two-thirds. 
 Full 
 
 Dried 
 blood. 
 
 Pounds. 
 55 
 110 
 220 
 440 
 (>«0 
 
 NiTEOGEX MIX 
 
 TURE Group.. 
 
 J 
 
 Eation. 
 
 One-twelfth 
 One-sixth .. 
 One-third . . 
 Two-thirds . 
 Full 
 
 Nitrog 6 n 
 mixture. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 56 
 
 75 
 150 
 300 
 450 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 In this way such materials as may be most desirable can be selected 
 for each exi)eriment, and for each a group be used with all or part of 
 the rations suggested. Future experience must show what quantities 
 will be best. Probably, for ordin#ry crops in the North, the three larg- 
 est rations will be well. In the South, for cotton, very likely the smaller 
 will be preferable. At any rate, this flexibility of plan allows fair lati- 
 tude of detail, and at the same time secures the uniformity needed for 
 the tabulation and comparison of different experiments. 
 
 In some cases it will be desirable to use the nitrogenous fertilizers 
 alone. In the majority of cases, however, the full effect of the nitrogen 
 will not l)e manifested unless some other materials are added. Generally 
 speaking, the experiment will be most satisfactory with " complete fertil- 
 izers," such as can be made by adding the nitrogenous materials to a 
 mixture of superphosphate and potash salt, which may be designated 
 as "mineral fertilizers" or "mixed minerals." For these, the two-thirds 
 rations, 400 pounds of superphosjjhate and 133 pounds of muriate of 
 potash, will probably be adapted to a larger proportion of the soils and 
 crops than the mixture of 300 xjounds of superphosphate and 150 pounds 
 of muriate of potash, used in the former nitrogen experiments. Taking 
 the basal mixture named, and adding the several rations of nitrate of 
 soda we shall have a "Xitrate of Soda Group" of five mixtures, each 
 mixture containing the "mixed minerals" with a nitrate of soda ration 
 as below : 
 
 Nitrate of Soda Group: 
 
 Mixed minerals with nitrate of soda, one-twelfth ration. 
 Mixed minerals with nitrate of soda, one-sixth ration. 
 
24 
 
 Mixed minerals with nitrate of soda, one-tliird ration. 
 Mixed minerals with nitrate of soda, two- thirds ration. 
 Mixed minerals with nitrate of soda, full ration. 
 The amount per acre and the percentages of the several ingredients in 
 the nitrogen mixture group, for instance, would be as follows : 
 
 
 I'ertilizing materials. 
 
 Ingredients. 
 
 U^itrogen mixture group. 
 
 <1> o 
 
 6 i=< 
 
 4o 
 |i 
 
 c ft 
 
 to 
 
 3 ? 
 
 T ft 
 
 = S 
 ftM 
 
 
 ca . 
 
 a 
 
 s 
 
 ft 
 
 4i 
 g 
 
 a" 
 
 
 
 c_2 
 
 ll 
 
 -5 3 
 
 2§ 
 
 "k a 
 
 
 6 
 
 .a 
 
 ea 
 "o 
 
 1 
 
 
 ia^ 
 
 %^ 
 
 t^; '" 
 
 Fi ^ 
 
 e-, 
 
 S 
 
 fn 
 
 Ph 
 
 ;2; 
 
 One-twelfth ration 
 
 400 
 
 133 
 
 38 
 
 C4 
 
 67 
 
 6 
 
 11.2 
 
 11.7 
 
 1.5 
 
 
 400 
 
 133 
 
 
 C4 
 
 67 
 
 12 
 
 10.5 
 
 11.0 
 
 2.0 
 
 
 400 
 
 133 
 
 150 
 
 64 
 
 67 
 
 24 
 
 9.3 
 
 9.8 
 
 3.5 
 
 
 400 
 400 
 
 133 
 
 300 
 
 430 
 
 64 
 64 
 
 67 
 67 
 
 48 
 72 
 
 7.6 
 6.5 
 
 8.0 
 6.8 
 
 5 8 
 
 
 7.3 
 
 
 
 PItELI3IIi;AE,Y GROUP. 
 
 The experiment will be much more satisfactory if we know the effects 
 of the superphosphate, potash, salt, and nitrogenous materials sepa- 
 rately, and, inferentially, the capacity of the soil to supply the phos- 
 phoric acid and potash as well as the nitrogen. To this end we may 
 use the materials separately, and two by two, as has been done in pre- 
 vious experiments, and is shown in |;he schedule beyond. In the ex- 
 periments described above the nitrogen of the preliminary groups has 
 been supplied in either nitrate of soda or " nitrogen mixture." Though 
 experience has shown very little difference, probably the mixture will 
 be "the safer, and accordingly it is here recommended. 
 
 As urged above, the many sources of error in field experiments make 
 duplicates very imjjortant. This may be effected by repeating the nitro- 
 g£n groups, in which opportunity is taken to test the different forms of 
 nitrogen, and by putting the mixed minerals on each side of each nitrogen 
 group, thus testing the uniformity of the soil, replacing the unmanured 
 plots, and showing more accurately the effects of the nitrogen. 
 
 To recapitulate briefly, our experimental fertilizers, as thus planned, 
 will be arranged in grou^js, thus : 
 
 C-r> ,. . r~< T- 1 1 -i IP ) Thus testing the effects of inffrediprts 
 
 S Prehinmnry Group. Each hy itself, / a,.parately-and capacity of soil to sup- 
 \ and two by two. ^ ply them: 
 
 C Nitrate of soda Group, 
 acid in nitrate of sckIm. 
 
 Partial fertilizers . 
 
 S'itrogen as nitiicl 
 
 Complete Fertilizers. 
 
 I Sulphate of ammonia Group. Nitrogen as | 
 J anunonia in sulphate of ammonia. '^ 
 
 ^ Dried blood Group. Nitrogen as organic f 
 
 nitrogen in dried blood. I 
 
 Nitrogen mixture Group. Nitrogen in the | 
 
 three fonas named above. J 
 
 Nitrogen in one-twelfth, one- 
 sixth, one-third, two-thirds, 
 and full rations. 
 
 Other groups containing meat scrap, fish guano, Peruvian guano, 
 leather scrap, &c., can be employed at the discrefon of the experi- 
 menter. When desired, as may be the case with cotton, for instance, 
 
25 
 
 half tie quantities maybe used, or the same quantities distributed over 
 double the area. The preliminary groups can be omitted if necessary, 
 the nitrogen groups used without the basal mixture, and a smaller list 
 of rations used in each group, as may be desirable in each case. Two 
 nitrogen sets, which can be obtained ready for use, are described beyond. 
 
 PHOSPHORIC ACID EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 In devising plans for these experiments we have to consider what 
 questions are to be studied and what compounds of phosphoric acid are 
 to be employed. 
 
 - A. — Questions to be studied. 
 
 The following may be regarded, at the outset at least, as among the 
 more important: 
 
 I. The action of phosphoric acid in different forms and amounts upon 
 the growth of i)lants under different conditions of crop, soil, climate, 
 season, &c., e. g., 
 
 1. Soluble vs. precipitated. 
 
 2. Soluble Ts. insoluble. 
 
 3. Effects of fineness of pulverization upon the availability of in- 
 
 soluble phosphoric acid in bone, rock phosphate, &c. 
 
 4. Bone vs. mineral phosphate. 
 
 5. Raw bone vs. boiled bone; L e., bone from which gelatine has been 
 
 extracted. 
 
 II. The feeding capacities of different plants as related to phosphoric 
 acid, i. €., their capabilities of availing themselves of the supplies of 
 phosphoric acid at their disposal in the soil, and in fertilizers, in so 
 far as their capabilities are indicated by the observed effects of the 
 phosphoric acid compounds. 
 
 B.— FOKMS AND AMOUNTS OF PHOSPHORIC ACID AND PHOSPHATIC 
 
 COMPOUNDS. 
 
 The following list seems complete enough for the present purpose : 
 
 I. Forms of phosphoric acid : 
 
 1. Soluble. 
 
 2. Precipitated. 
 
 3. Insoluble. 
 
 II. Kinds of phosphatic compounds : 
 
 1. Bone. 
 
 a. Raw. 
 h. Steamed. 
 
 c. Bone black. 
 
 d. Bone ash. 
 
 2. Phosphatic guanos. 
 
 a. Cura9oa, &c. 
 
26 
 
 3. Mineral or rock pliosphate. 
 a. Soiitli Carolina. 
 &. Navassa. 
 c. Apatite, »&c. 
 
 III. Grades of fineness: The grades of fineness will naturally depend 
 upon what the market affords. We might use, for instance : 
 
 1. Coarse. 
 
 2. Medium. 
 
 3. Fine. 
 
 IV. Quantities of phosphoric acid: 
 
 Each of the several forms may be used in different " rations," the 
 several rations making a group, as in the nitrogen experiments. 
 
 DETAILED PLANS. 
 
 For the specific materials to furnish the phosphoric acid in the soluble 
 and precipitated forms, the following are X3erhaps as well fitted for the 
 puriiose as any. Of course others will suggest themselves. 
 
 1. Soluble phosphoric acid : 
 
 a. Dissolved bone black with 16 per cent. P2O5. 
 h. High-grade sux)erphosphate with 32 per cent. P2O5. 
 Of the above, perhaps {a) will serve best to begin with. 
 
 2. Precipitated phosphoric acid. This may consist of — 
 
 a. High-grade superi^hosphate with equal weights of chalk, making 
 a precipitated phosphate with 16 per cent. P2O5. 
 
 3. Insoluble x>hosphoric acid. For this, bone, phosphatic guanos, and 
 
 mineral or rock phosphates will be in order. Bone and South Caro- 
 lina phosphate are perhaps the most important at present: 
 a. Fine bone dust (mesh, 40.) from steamed or raw bone with 25 per 
 
 cent. P2O5. 
 6. South Carolina phosphate with 25 per cent. P2O5. 
 
 QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORIC ACID. 
 
 As already suggested we may arrange for each of the phosphatic com- 
 pounds a group of four rations. Below are exami)les with quantities 
 per acre : 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 p . 
 
 
 
 r- 
 
 
 
 -OS 
 
 
 
 <D^ 
 
 
 
 siA 
 
 
 
 > S 
 
 
 
 IS* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ."S o 
 
 
 a 
 
 O^ 
 
 
 a 
 
 P-§ 
 
 
 .2 
 
 01 
 
 
 o 
 
 •sa 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 0) 
 
 
 c4 
 
 
 
 c4 
 
 M 
 
 
 M 
 
 P 
 
 
 M 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Superphosphate J 
 
 a. One-sixth 
 
 h. One-third 
 
 100 
 
 200 
 
 Precipitated [ 
 
 PHOSPH ATE^^ 
 
 Group. 
 
 a. One-sixth 
 
 6. One-thml 
 
 300 
 200 
 
 Group. 1 
 
 c. Tsvo-thirds . .. 
 
 400 
 
 c. Two-thirds.... 
 
 4«0 
 
 1 
 
 d. Full 
 
 CUO 
 
 d. Pull 
 
 GOO 
 
 V. 
 
 
 
 
•27 
 
 
 Eation. 
 
 
 
 Eation 
 
 1 
 
 02 
 
 South Carolina f 
 
 SUPEUPHOS--; 
 
 PHATE Geo UP. 'j 
 
 d. One-sixtli 
 
 h. One-thiiol 
 
 c. Two-thirds — 
 a. Full....... 
 
 Pounds. 
 133 
 267 
 533 
 800 
 
 Steamed Bone J 
 Group. ] 
 
 a. One-sixth 
 
 6. One-third 
 
 c. Two-thii'ds ... 
 
 d. Full 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 67 
 
 133 
 
 267 
 
 400 
 
 
 
 
 
 The effects of fineuess of pulverization may be tested by sucli groujjs 
 as these : 
 
 Fine, medium, 
 and coause 
 Bone Dust 
 Gkoup. 
 
 Grade of fineness. 
 
 Fine 
 
 Medium 
 Coarse . . 
 
 Ground 
 bone. 
 
 Pounds. 
 400 
 400 
 400 
 
 Fine, medium, 
 AND coarse S. 1 
 C. Phosphate ( 
 'Group. 
 
 Grade of fineness. 
 
 Fine 
 
 Medium 
 Coarse.. 
 
 Phosphate. 
 
 Pounds. 
 400 
 400 
 400 
 
 The details of quantities per acr® and i^ercentages of the Superphos. 
 phate group, for instance, will be : 
 
 
 Fertilizing materials. 
 
 Ingredients. 
 
 Superphosphate Group. 
 
 V. s 
 
 'as 
 ft 
 
 S to 
 
 11 
 
 .a . 
 
 1' 
 
 .a o 
 
 m !-< 
 ^^ 
 
 i^ a 
 
 O 3 
 
 3 ft 
 m 
 
 Q 
 
 S 
 O . 
 
 ft9 
 
 ai 
 
 o ft 
 
 ft 
 
 §g 
 ^§ 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 C3 o 
 
 .2 2 
 
 O ft 
 
 1 
 
 -« ft 
 
 o 
 
 ft 
 
 g 
 
 fcJC 
 
 o 
 
 1 
 ft 
 
 1 
 
 ft ■ 
 1 . 
 
 is ■ 
 
 ft 
 
 o 
 
 A, One-sixth ration 
 
 150 
 150 
 150 
 150 
 
 133 
 133 
 133 
 133 
 
 100 
 200 
 400 
 600 
 
 24 
 24 
 24 
 24 
 
 67 
 67 
 67 
 67 
 
 16 
 32 
 64 
 96 
 
 6.3 
 
 5.0 
 3.5 
 2.7 
 
 17.3 
 
 13.9 
 
 9.8 
 
 7.6 
 
 4.2 
 6 7 
 
 C, IVo-thirds ration 
 
 I) full ration 
 
 9.4 
 10 9 
 
 
 
 That is to say, the Superphosphate Group would thus consist of four 
 mixtures. Each of these mixtures will contain a "basal mixture" witn 
 nitrogen and potash each in f ration (see page 20). To this basal mixture 
 the super-phosphate is added in successiv^e amounts, from " one-sixth ra- 
 titon" to "full ration," or from 16 to 96 pounds per acre. 
 
 SULPHATE OF LIME GEOUP. 
 
 Since more or less of the effect of the superphosphate may be due to 
 its sulphate of lime, a check trial with plaster as provided in the schedule 
 on page 31 may be advisable. 
 
 The explanation of the nitrogen experiment will apply, mutatis mu- 
 tandis, to the phosphoric acid exx)eriment. The idea is to so arrange the 
 
28 
 
 materials that each experimenter may select groups or parts of groups 
 at his discretion and thus make up such an experiment as will be most 
 to the purpose in the conditions under which he works. 
 
 The following list of materials and groups includes perhaps the most 
 important, and suggests a schedule of experimental fertilizers: 
 
 t r> T • „ n ^ „„-.!, i„ ,-+„„if ■) Thus testing the effects of iDgredients 
 Partial Fertilizers ... J ^"^^^^^f L^™"P' ^'''^^ ^^ '*'"'^^' f sepaiatelyrand capacity of soil to sup- 
 
 and two bv two. 
 
 ) ply them.' 
 
 f Soluble phosphoric acid Group. "| 
 
 I Precipitated phosphoric acid Group. 
 Insoluble phosphoric acid Group. Steamed bone. 
 Insoluble phosphoric acid Group. Eaw lione. 1, 
 
 Insoluble phosphoric acid Group. S. C. phosphate. f 
 
 Complete Fertilizers. ] ^"pifsp^i^e". """"^ ^'''"^' ^^°^' ^''''^ ^'''"^' ^' ^' '"^''''" | 
 I Etc., etc. J 
 
 Phosphoric acid in 
 one -sixth ration, 
 one -third ration, 
 two-thirds ration, 
 and full lation. 
 
 Kaw bono Group. 
 South Carolina phosphate Group. 
 Etc., etc., etc. 
 
 ? Different grades of 
 I fineness. 
 
 teCHBDULES FOR EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 While experimenters will arrange their experiments at discretion, it 
 has seemed to me desirable to suggest schedules, and, if practicable, to 
 make arrangements to assist them in procuring the materials with the 
 least trouble and expense. I have, therefore, drawn up schedules for 
 three sets of experimental fertilizers, as follows: 
 
 The first, ^^ Nitrogen Set Wo. 1," is nearly the same as used by a num- 
 ber of gentlemen last season, Nitrogen is supi:)lied as nitric acid, 
 ammonia, and organic nitrogen, in three groups with three rations, ^-, §, 
 and full ration, in each. The set requires 18 plots for the fertilizers, 
 which, with two unmanured, would make 20 plots, or, with one-twentieth 
 acre plots, one acre of land, for the experiment. With spaces between 
 the plots a larger area will be needed. 
 
 NITEOGEN SET NO. 1. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 1. Nitrate of soda, one-third ration 
 
 2. Superphosphate 
 
 3. Muriate of potash 
 
 . C Nitrate of soda, one-third ration 
 
 Preliminary Group . . -^ { Superphosphate 
 
 I - S Nitrate of soda, one-third ration 
 
 ■ J Muriate of potasii 
 
 I «■ { ^Se'TS-1. } ^^-^ ---^^''- I 
 
 ( n S Mixed minerals, as No. 6 
 
 ■ I Nitrate of soda, one-third ration 
 
 T.T.. , „p„„,i„rc o C Mixed minerals, as No. () 
 
 Nitrate of soda Group , 8. ^ ^.^^^^^^ ^^ soda, two-thirds ration 
 
 q 5 Mixed minerals, as No. 6 
 
 [ ■ I Nitrate of soda, full i ation 
 
 Qa. Mixed minerals, as No. G 
 
 Founds. 
 7.5 
 
 20.0 
 G.7 
 7.5 
 
 20.0 
 7.5 
 6.7 
 
 20.0 
 6.7 
 
 26.7 
 7.5 
 20. 7 
 15.0 
 26.7 
 22.5 
 
 26.7 
 
 Pounds. 
 15.0 
 40.0 
 i:. 3 
 15.0 
 40.0 
 15.0 
 33.3 
 40.0 
 13.3 
 
 53. 3 
 15. 
 53. 3 
 30. 
 53. 3 
 45.0 
 
 53.3 
 
29 
 
 NITROGEN SET No. 1— Continued. 
 
 
 Amounts. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 |3 
 
 o S o 
 
 p s> S 
 
 (- a CI 
 
 15 
 
 « O 5, 
 
 ill 
 
 
 Pounds. 
 26.7 
 5.6 
 26.7 
 11.3 . 
 26.7 
 16.8 
 
 26.7 
 
 26.7 
 11.0 
 26.7 
 22.0 
 26.7 
 33.0 
 
 26.7 
 
 Pounds. 
 53 3 
 
 
 11.3 
 
 
 53.3 
 
 
 22.5 
 
 
 53.3 
 
 
 33.7 
 
 
 53.3 
 
 
 53.3 
 
 1 ; Diied blood, one-third ration 
 
 22.0 
 
 .„.,,, -, ^ 1 , , < Mivpfl ITlinnI■nl^^, hm N.i fi 
 
 53 3 
 
 Dried blood Group - - <j 14. | 1^^^,^^ i,i„oj_ two-thirds ration '.V 
 
 4i U 
 
 
 53.3 
 
 j.^"' i Dried blood, full ration.'. 
 
 66.0 
 
 6c. Mixed minerals, as No. 6 
 
 53.3 
 
 
 
 . The following, ^^ Nitrogen Set No. 2," is simpler, containing only the 
 preliminary group, and a nitrogen mixture group with five rations, and 
 one extra " mixed minerals." It has the advantage of greater simplicity, 
 and of testing the eflfects of smaller quantities of nitrogen, but has the 
 disatl vantage of not duplicating the nitrogen tests. It can be greatly 
 improved by duplicating the "nitrogen mixture" group, which, with an 
 extra "mixed minerals," will make 18 fertilizers. With one-twentieth 
 acre plots, this would require an acre, and make an excellent experiment. 
 
 NITROGEN SET NO. 2. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 Amounts. 
 
 Preliminary Group. .. ■ 
 
 f 1. IJitrogen mixture, one-third ration 
 
 2. Superphosphate 
 
 Muriate of potash 
 
 Nitrogen mi.\ture, one-third ration 
 
 Superphosphate 
 
 Nitrogen mixture, one-third ration 
 
 Muriate of potash 
 
 g ( Superphosi)hate 
 
 ■ \ Muriate of potash 
 
 3. 
 
 5. 
 
 Nitrogen 
 Group. 
 
 ,- C Mixed minerals 
 
 \ Nitrogen mixture, one-twelfth ration 
 
 g ( Mixed minerals 
 
 I Nitrogen mixture, one-sixth ration 
 
 g ( Mixed minerals ... 
 
 I Nitrogen mixture, one-third ration 
 
 ,„ ^ Mixed minerals 
 
 ) Nitrogen mixture, two-thirds ration 
 
 ,-, C Mixed minerals .. 
 
 ■ \ Nitrogen mixture, full ration 
 
 6a. Mixed minerals. 
 
30 
 
 The following specifications are intended for use in ordering the fer- 
 tilizers : 
 
 Specifications for nitrogen sets: Materials to he weighed and mixed 
 with greatest possible care and accuracy, pnt in bags, and each bag 
 furnished with a label stating number and contents per schedule. Min- 
 imum percentages as follows : Nitrate of soda, 16 per cent, nitrogen ; 
 sulphate of ammonia, 21 per cent, nitrogen; dried blood, 11 per cent, 
 mtrogen; superphosphate (dissolved bone black) 15 per cent, soluble 
 and 16 per cent, total phosphoric acid; muriate of potash, 50 per cent, 
 potash. 
 
 PHOSPHOEIC ACID SET. 
 
 This tests the action of soluble phosphoric acid, in dissolved bone 
 black, precipitated phosphoric acid in a mixture of high grade super- 
 phosphate from bone and chalk, and insoluble ijhosphoric acid in bone 
 from which the larger part of the organic matter has been removed. A 
 sulphate of lime group is added as a test of the effect of the sulphuric 
 acid and lime of the superphosphates. This includes 25 fertilizers, 
 which with two unmanured plots would require 27 plots, or if each plot 
 is one-twentieth acre, a little over 1^ acres, and more if unmanured strips 
 are left between the rows. The set can be reduced to 21 by omitting 
 the sulphate of lime group, and to 18 by using only three rations in each 
 phosphoric acid group. 
 
 PHOSPHORIC ACID SET. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 Preliminary Group.. < 
 
 NitrosfeTi mixture . 
 
 Superphosphate . . . 
 
 Muriate of potash . 
 ( Nitrogen mixture . 
 I Superphospliate. 
 
 C Muriate of potash 
 ^ Sn ■ • 
 
 perphosphaie 
 
 Nitrogen mixture 
 
 Muriate of potash 
 
 > Baaal mixture 5 
 
 ^•r 
 
 Basal mixture 
 
 Dissolved bone black , 
 
 p <j Basal mixtuie , 
 
 Soluble phosphoric- j ( Dissolved bone black . 
 
 acid Group. ^ ^ C Basal mixture . . 
 
 I Dissolved bone black . 
 
 -j-> ( Basal mixture 
 
 ■ \ Dissolved bone black . 
 
 Fa. Basal mixture 
 
 f A ^ Basal mixture 
 
 I ■< Precipitated phosphate. 
 
 p ^ Basal mixture 
 
 Precipitated _ph os- ', i Precipitated phosphate . 
 
 phoric-acid Group. 1 p j Basarmixture 
 
 Precipitated phosphate. 
 
 I jy S Basal mixture 
 
 I ■ ( Precipitated phosphate. 
 
 Fb. Basal mixture 
 
 Amounts. 
 
 Oj i, O 
 
 Pounds. 
 7.5 
 
 2(». 
 6.7 
 7.5 
 
 20.0 
 6.7 
 
 20.0 
 7. 5 
 6.7 
 
 14.2 
 5. 
 14.2 
 10.0 
 14.2 
 20.0 
 14.2 
 30.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 14.2 
 .5.0 
 14.2 
 10.0 
 14.2 
 20.0 
 14.2 
 30.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 =2S 
 
 o oft 
 O 
 
 Pounds. 
 15.0 
 40.0 
 ]3. 3 
 15.0 
 40,0 
 13.3 
 40.0 
 15.0 
 13.3 
 
 28.3 
 10.0 
 28.3 
 20. 
 28.3 
 40.0 
 2,S 3 
 60.0 
 
 28.3 
 
 28.3 
 10.0 
 28. 3 
 20.0 
 28 3 
 40.0 
 28.3 
 00.0 
 
 28.3 
 
31 
 
 PHOSPHOEIC ACID SET— Continued. 
 
 Amounts. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 ' *r o 
 
 o.S iJ 
 
 '. C Casal mixture - 
 
 ) Bone dust 
 
 |, C Basal mixture . 
 
 Steamed bone Group. <j J Ea'sal mixture". 
 
 " ^- ) Couedust 
 
 j-x 5 lir.sal mixture . 
 J Bone dust 
 
 Tc. Basal mixture . 
 
 Sulphate 
 Group. 
 
 of lime 
 
 I Basal mixture . 
 
 ; Plaster 
 
 I Basal mixture . 
 ! Piaster 
 
 Basal mixture . 
 
 Plaster 
 
 Fd. Basal mixture. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 28.3 
 ]0. 
 28.3 
 20.0 
 28.3 
 40.0 
 28.3 
 CO.O 
 
 28.3 
 
 28.3 
 7.5 
 28.3 
 15.0 
 28.3 
 22.5 
 
 28.3 
 
 Besides the above set, groups like the following may be employed. 
 
 Materials. 
 
 South Caroliua super- 
 phosphate Group. 
 
 South Carolina phos- ) 
 
 ph:ite Gioup. 
 
 )c. 
 
 Steamed bone Group. 
 
 1 
 
 l°- 
 
 fA. 
 
 ' B. 
 
 C. 
 
 ('>• 
 
 Pine, medium, andj-j, 
 coarse bone Group- '^ 
 
 'c. 
 
 . A. 
 Fine, medium, and 
 coarse South Caroli-^ B 
 na i)ho8phate Group 
 
 C. 
 
 Amounts. 
 
 < Basal mixture 
 
 ) South Carolina superphosphate 
 
 ( Basal mixture « 
 
 ( South Carolina superphosphate 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I South Carolina superphosphate 
 
 C Ba.sai mixture ' 
 
 I South Carolina superphosphate 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I South Carolina phosphate 
 
 < Basal mixture 
 
 l South Carolina phosphate 
 
 ( Basnl mixture 
 
 I South Cai olina phosphate 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I South Carolina phosphate 
 
 < Basal mixture . 
 
 I Steamed bone 
 
 ( Basal mixture 
 
 ( Steamed bone 
 
 ( Basal mixture 
 
 I Steamed bone 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I Steamed bone 
 
 ( Basal mixture 
 
 I Ground bono (line) 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I Ground bono (medium) 
 
 < Basal mixture 
 
 I Ground bone (coarse) 
 
 C Basal mixture 
 
 I Eoutli Carolina phospliate (line) 
 
 f Basal mixture 
 
 \ South Carolina phosphate (medium) 
 
 5 Basal mixture 
 
 I South Carolina phosphate (coarse).. 
 
 Pounds. 
 14-. 2 
 6.7 
 14.2 
 13.3 
 14.2 
 26.7 
 14.2 
 40.0 
 
 ] 14.2 
 
 14.2 
 
 Pounds. 
 28 3 
 13:3 
 28.3 
 26.7 
 28.3 
 53.4 
 28.3 
 80.0 
 
 28.3 
 28.3 
 
 28.3 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 .5.0 
 
 10.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 10 
 
 20.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28 3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 30. 
 
 60.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28. 3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
 1.4. 2 
 
 28.3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 20,0 
 
 40.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
 14.2 
 
 28.3 
 
 20.0 
 
 40.0 
 
32 
 
 Specifications for fertilizers of phosphoric acid set: Materials to be put 
 up with greatest care, in bags witli labels stating contents. Minimum 
 percentages as follows ; Mtrogeu mixture and muriate of potash as in 
 nitrogen experiment. Superphosphate (dissolved bone black) with 1.5 
 per cent, soluble, and 10 per cent, total P2O5. Precipitated phosphate 
 to consist of high grade superphosphates 32 per cent, and chalk in equal 
 parts, and to contain 16 per cent. P2O5. Other materials to be of good 
 average quality. 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF THE EXPERIMENT. 
 
 The plan herewith shows a fitting arrangement for the "Nitrogen 
 Experiment No. 1," and illustrates how others may advantageously be 
 planned. 
 
 Nitrogen Experiment, 
 
 Arrangement of experimental field. 
 
 With " Acre set." Each plot ^ acre. 
 
 AVhole field one acre. 
 With " Two-acre set." Each plot -j^o- acre. 
 
 W^hole field two acres. 
 
 Or more with unmanured 
 strips between each two 
 plots. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Preliminary group \ 
 
 Nitric-acid group . 
 
 Ammonia group . 
 
 0. No manure. 
 
 1. Nitrate of soda. 
 
 2. Superphosphate. 
 
 3. Muriate of ])0tash. 
 
 4. Nitrate of soda and superphosphate. 
 
 5. Nitrate of soda and juuriate of potash. 
 
 6. Superj^hospliate and muriate of potash. 
 
 "Mixed minerals." 
 
 7. Mixed minerals plus nitrate of soda. One- 
 
 third ration. 
 
 8. Mixed minerals plus nitrate of soda. Two- 
 
 thirds ration, 
 
 9. Mixed minerals i)lus nitrate of soda. Full 
 
 ration. 
 6a. Mixed minerals. Duplicate of No. 6. 
 ^ 10. Mixed minerals plus sulphate of ammonia. 
 
 . One-third ration. 
 . 11. Mixed minerals plus suliihate of ammonia. 
 » Two-thirds ration. 
 
 12. Mixed minerals plus sulphate of ammonia. 
 Full ration. 
 
 Duplicate of No. 6. 
 l)lus dried blood. One- 
 
 eft. 
 13. 
 
 Organic-nitrogen group { 
 
 Mixed minerals. 
 
 Mixed minerals 
 third ration. 
 
 14. Mixed minerals 
 
 thirds ration. 
 
 15. Mixed minerals 
 
 ration. 
 6c. Mixed minerals. 
 00. No manure. 
 
 jdIus dried blood. Two- 
 plus dried blood. Full 
 Duplicate of No. 6. 
 
33 
 
 CROPS TO BE EXPEEIMENTED UPON. 
 
 The kind of croj) will, of course, be selected by the experimenter 
 Experiments are needed upon all our ordinary crops, but especially on 
 wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn, sorghum, grass, clover, onions, potatoes, 
 roots, and, in the South, sugar cane and cotton. 
 3 A 
 
% i 
 
 d 
 
 4^ 
 
 ^olfl. 
 
 — MAR2519 n I 
 
 LEVI 
 
 and the 
 
 Stockbridge Principle of Plant Feeding 
 
 By WILLIAM H. BOWKER 
 
 ic-ali siral 
 
 OCKBRIDc/^llegte 
 
^ 
 
 
 < 
 
LEVI STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 and the 
 
 Stockbridge Principle 
 of Plant Feeding 
 
 Extract from Tribute 
 By WILLIAM H. BOWKER 
 
 Read at the 
 
 Memorial Exercises at Amherst 
 
 1904 
 
 Printed 
 BOSTON 1911 
 
LEVI STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 Professor of Agriculture in the Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1S71 
 to 1S82, and President of the College from l.SSO to 1882. 
 
 1820—1904 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 LEVI STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 Biographical Note: Levi Stockbridge, a man of the 
 type of Abraham Lincoln, was a farmer's son and 
 for many years a practical farmer in Hadley, Mass. 
 Except for such schooling as he received at the 
 district school, and a few lectures in chemistry 
 which he attended at Amherst College, he was 
 self-taught. He possessed an alert mind, a reten- 
 tive memory, and a marked talent for clear, 
 forceful expression. Becoming distinguished as 
 a leader and public speaker, he was sent for sev- 
 eral terms to both branches of the Massachusetts 
 Legislature. He was Massachusetts' first cattl^ 
 commissioner, and in the course of his twenty- 
 seven years' continuous service in that office he 
 came to know nearly every farmer in the state, 
 who looked up to and respected him. One of his 
 greatest achievements was the quick and effective 
 manner in which he stamped out a threatened 
 epidemic of pleuro-pneumonia. 
 
 He„was instrumental in securing for the state 
 the Agricultural College located at Amherst, 
 Mass., in spite of ridicule and strong opposition ."^j^^ 
 He was its first farm superintendent; later, pro- 
 fessor of agriculture, and for two years its presi- 
 dent. During his connection with the college, at 
 considerable personal inconvenience, he frequently 
 endorsed the notes of the college to the local 
 banks, thus tiding it over financial stress. He 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 was also " an ever-present help in time of need " 
 to many worthy students. All the students were 
 " his boys," and to all he was counselor and 
 friend, and endearingly known as " Prof Stock." 
 
 Physically, he was tall and wiry, with a great 
 capacity for work, which he never shirked. He 
 was humorous, tactful, judicial, but outspoken; 
 always sunny, hopeful, sane; of the right makeup 
 to lead and teach young manhood. He sprang 
 from the plain people and believed in them; thus 
 he naturally abhorred a plutocracy and believed 
 in every man's having a fair chance. 
 
 It is thought that he did as much to advance 
 the cause of agricultural education and to popu- 
 larize the chemistry of plant foods as any one man 
 of his time. It was while he occupied the chair 
 of professor of agriculture that he evolved the 
 Stockbridge principle of plant feeding and the 
 Stockbridge formulas which he freely published 
 to the world, and which have made his name a 
 household word in rural communities. 
 
THE STOCKBRIDGE PRINCIPLE 
 OF PLANT FEEDING 
 
 If I were asked what was Professor Stock- 
 bridge's greatest contribution to agriculture, I 
 should say that it was not his formulas for crop 
 feeding by which he is so widely known; for, 
 useful as these were, they were but stepping 
 stones to a better knowledge of the object and 
 use of fertilizers. His greatest contribution to 
 agriculture, as it seems to me, was his new con- 
 ception of the office of fertility in farm economy. 
 Up to the time of the publication of the Stock- 
 bridge formulas, the practice had been to manure 
 the soil in order to restore lost fertility and to 
 supply deficiencies in the soil, as ascertained by 
 a chemical or crop analysis of the soil. Stock- 
 bridge saw that this method was not a practical 
 solution of the problem, for neither chemical 
 nor crop analysis of the soil could be relied upon 
 as a true guide to its enrichment. The chemist 
 disclosed too much that was misleading and the 
 crop too little that was conclusive. But, what 
 is more to the point, Stockbridge saw that we 
 had taken hold of the problem at the wrong end. 
 
 A PRACTICAL SOLUTION 
 
 It was not the soil, but the crop, that we should 
 first consider. We should study it and its needs, 
 and supply it, as far as we were able, with the 
 necessary elements of plant nutrition by the 
 
FEED THE PLANT — NOT THE SOIL 
 
 use of properly balanced manures. In a word, 
 he turned from the inert soil, which could not 
 answer, to the living crop, which could, and put 
 this question to it: 
 
 " What shall I supply you in excess of what 
 you may obtain from the soil or air by your own 
 habits and conditions of growth to make you 
 a perfect and profitable crop? " 
 
 On the other hand, the farmer was asking him: 
 
 " What shall I use to produce profitable crops 
 — how much and in what form? " 
 
 Starting, then, from the crop, with the farm- 
 er's question ever spurring him on, and with 
 such data as he could find, he worked out his 
 well-known formulas, which were published 
 broadcast in 1876. And let me say here that 
 besides being published in many agricultural 
 papers and reports, more than half a million 
 pamphlets containing them were distributed. 
 
 FORMULAS NOT INFALLIBLE 
 
 He did not claim that his formulas were 
 infallible, for he anticipated and announced, 
 what we soon discovered in practice, that they 
 would need to be modified, as experience should 
 point the way. They served, however, a greater 
 purpose even than Stockbridge dreamed at the 
 time — they centered our thought and our 
 study on the crop. From that time on we dis- 
 cussed plant food and not soil food — plant feed- 
 ing instead of soil manuring. '' Feed the crop 
 rather than the soil " was a frequent expression 
 at that time. 
 
 It is well to observe here that crop formulas 
 were not new. Ville and others had published 
 
THE FIRST DEFINITE METHOD 
 
 various sets. The Stockbridge formulas, how- 
 ever, were unique in this: that they were based 
 not alone on the analysis of the crop, but on 
 its power of absorption from all the sources of 
 fertility — from soil, air, and water. Thus 
 Stockbridge boldly prescribed: 
 
 " To produce fifty bushels of shelled corn per 
 acre (without any stable manure) and its natural 
 proportion of stover, more than the natural 
 yield of the land, apply so many pounds each of 
 nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid. Or, to 
 produce a stated quantity of tobacco leaf of 
 the desired color and texture, apply a stated 
 quantity of plant food elements, preferably in 
 the form of sulphates and nitrates." 
 
 Here, then, for the first time, a definite way was 
 prescribed to attain a definite object. It was a 
 startling proposition, and, as might be expected, 
 it brought ridicule from many quarters, but 
 Stockbridge did not allow that to disturb him. 
 He knew that the commercial farmer needed a 
 tangible starting point. He knew that to con- 
 sider the needs of the crop, the living thing, both 
 as to amount and kind of plant food, rather than 
 the needs of the soil, an unknown and unknow- 
 able quantity, was not only a common-sense way 
 of meeting the problem of plant nutrition, but 
 a very direct way of helping the farmer out of 
 the quagmire of doubt. 
 
 INSURE THE CROP 
 
 The formulas might not be accurate; in some 
 cases they might supply excessive amounts of 
 plant food elements and apparently be very 
 wasteful, yet he believed that in the end it was 
 
STUDY THE PLANT 
 
 better economy to apply too much and insure a 
 crop than use too little and lose a crop. Never- 
 theless, as Professor Stockbridge anticipated 
 would be the case, the fertilizers based on his 
 formulas were modified from time to time as we 
 gained light, chiefly by the reduction of nitrogen 
 and the increase of phosphoric acid, as it was 
 found that many crops were able to gather 
 from natural sources, through bacterial action or 
 otherwise, some part of the required nitrogen, 
 and that an excess of available phosphoric acid 
 would hasten maturity. It was also found that 
 to supply the full complement of nitrogen in 
 addition to what the crop would assimilate for 
 itself tended in many cases to produce an un- 
 balanced growth; yet, on the other hand, it 
 was found that in some cases, especially where 
 a forced growth or a tender leaf was required, 
 an excess of nitrogen was desirable. Thus it 
 will be seen that the crop was both the starting 
 and the objective point. Not only its chemical 
 needs, but its habits and conditions of growth, 
 the object for which it was grown, and its 
 market qualities, were all factors which influ- 
 enced the composition or modification of the 
 fertilizers; and the same factors are as potent 
 to-day. Thus, since it was the crop that chiefly 
 concerned Professor Stockbridge, how natural 
 and sensible was his question: " What shall I 
 supply you to make you a perfect and profitable 
 crop? " 
 
 POTENTIAL FERTILITY 
 
 Let us now consider for a moment another 
 phase of the subject, namely, the potential 
 
THE PLANT FOOD IN THE SOIL 
 
 fertility of the soil, or " the natural yield," to 
 which Professor Stockbridge frequently referred. 
 It has been known for a long time that practically 
 all tillable soils are rich in plant food elements, 
 and yet many of them are barren, and most of 
 them will not produce profitable crops without 
 the aid of manure or fertilizer. 
 
 Prof. Frederick D. Chester, of Delaware, states 
 in an able bulletin recently published: 
 
 " An average of the results of 49 analyses of the typi- 
 cal soils of the United States showed per acre for the 
 first eight inches of surface 2,600 pounds of nitrogen, 
 4,800 pounds of phosphoric acid, and 13,400 pounds of 
 potash. The average yield of wheat in the United States 
 is 14 bushels per acre. Such a crop will remove 29.7 
 pounds of nitrogen, 9.5 pounds of phosphoric acid, 13.7 
 pounds of potash. 
 
 " Now, if all the potential nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 
 and potash could be rendered available, there is present 
 in such an average soil, in the first eight inches, enough 
 nitrogen to last ninety years, enough phosphoric acid 
 for five hundred years, and enough potash for one 
 thousand years." 
 
 In a word, potential fertility represents plant 
 food which is so tightly locked up that it is not 
 available for present needs and becomes avail- 
 able only through the process of decay and 
 disintegration, which is too slow to meet the 
 requirements of the commercial farmer. Stock- 
 bridge realized the situation, but instead of 
 asking the soil how much of the potential fer- 
 tility could be depended upon for each crop (a 
 question which will never be satisfactorily 
 answered), he went to the crop and asked it how 
 
THE VERY SMALL AMOUNT REQUIRED 
 
 much it was necessary to supply for a stated 
 yield over and above the natural yield of the 
 land. In all cases he found it to be a very small 
 quantity. For the corn crop, not over 200 
 pounds of nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid 
 was necessary, which the crop would return 
 fiftyfold (at least five tons in stalk and grain), 
 so little to produce so much, and yet, if this little 
 quantity of 200 pounds was not supplied, the 
 crop would be a failure. 
 
 THE LITTLE ESSENTIAL BALANCE 
 
 It was this little essential balance of available 
 plant food which stood between success and 
 failure that concerned Professor Stockbridge, as 
 it concerns every farmer to-day. Although it 
 was small, he did not deem it wise to depend 
 upon the potential fertility of the soil to supply 
 it, or even any considerable part of it. For the 
 commercial farmer it was too risky and uncertain. 
 To insure a crop, as far as one was able, was a 
 cardinal principle with him; not to do it was, in 
 his eyes, almost a crime. But he felt that all 
 these things would right themselves as we came 
 to know more about farm crops and their 
 environment. 
 
 THE SINGLE ELEMENT DOCTRINE 
 
 As bearing on the economy of his system of 
 plant feeding, I want to quote here one of his 
 apt illustrations. He said in effect: 
 
 " In a sense the farmer is a manufacturer and the soil 
 is his machine, into which he puts plant food, and out 
 of which, by the aid of nature and his own efforts, he 
 
THE SINGLE ELEMENT DOCTRINE 
 
 takes his product at harvest time. If the soil machine 
 is a good one, so much the better. If it has a balance of 
 crop-producing power to its credit, let us preserve that 
 balance for an emergency. Let us not draw on it for 
 present needs." 
 
 He had no patience with the so-called single- 
 element doctrine, which depends for its success 
 on the potential fertility — no patience with the 
 farmer who was trying to find out for himself if 
 he could leave out any one of the three leading 
 elements of plant nutrition (nitrogen, potash, 
 and phosphoric acid), or how little of each he 
 could get along with. That was a proper subject 
 for the scientific worker to investigate, but until 
 we knew more about it, the practical farmer, who 
 had his living to make and bills to pay, should 
 not tinker with it. To Stockbridge it meant, in 
 the end, improvident farming. At best, the 
 farmer had to take great chances, especially with 
 the weather, — the largest factor in crop raising, 
 over which he had no control, — but he should 
 take no chances with the things which he could 
 control. Among these were the amount and 
 kind of manure which he applied to his crops. 
 Thus, if he hoped for a stated crop he should at 
 least fertilize intelligently^ for that crop. For 
 the man who was dependent on his crops any 
 other course was unwise. Moreover, any other 
 course would leave the soil machine in a poorer 
 condition than he found it. Broadly speaking, 
 to encourage him to take out more than he 
 put back was not only bad economy, but bad 
 morals, and should be discouraged, for in the 
 end it would lead to crop bankruptcy. 
 
DIFFERENT FORMS OF PLANT FOOD 
 
 RAISING THE STANDARD 
 
 It is needless to say that the farmers appreci- 
 ated this bold course. As Stockbridge put it, 
 they jumped on his wagon before he was ready 
 to start. He was indeed their prophet, who led 
 them out of the wilderness of speculation into 
 the light of practical methods. As might be 
 expected, this new conception of the use of 
 chemical manures — or plant food, as he liked 
 to call it — not only revolutionized all our 
 notions of fertilization, but the entire fertilizer 
 business as well. It immediately raised the 
 standard of commercial manures from ordinary 
 superphosphates, containing no potash, to 
 " complete manures," many of them rich in 
 potash. Special fertilizers for special crops or 
 classes of crops were brought out by various 
 makers, and the business received a new impetus 
 and a new recognition in the community. It 
 was put on a sound footing, from which it can 
 never be displaced. 
 
 STOCK FEEDING AND PLANT FEEDING 
 
 As in stock feeding we chiefly concern our- 
 selves with the study of the animal and its needs, 
 so in plant feeding we must make an intelligent 
 study of the needs 'of the living crop. As we know 
 how to feed the cow for milk or beef, so we must 
 know how to feed the plant for leaf or seed. 
 Not only must we know the amount of plant 
 food to be supplied, based on crop requirements, 
 but the form and association of the different 
 elements must be considered; and in the study 
 of this problem we must also continue to study 
 the soil, its potential fertility, its physical and 
 
 10 
 
CONTINUAL STUDY NEEDED 
 
 chemical characteristics, and particularly the 
 lower orders of life which it contains, the bacteria 
 and other unseen forces. In short, we must 
 continue our study of all the sources and forces 
 of fertility, to the end that we may know what 
 each contributes to the upbuilding, not neces- 
 sarily of the soil, but of the crop life above the 
 soil. Thus did Stockbridge teach and practice. 
 
 GOOD PRACTICE AND GOOD SCIENCE 
 
 As Stephenson made practical the discovery of 
 Watts, as Singer improved upon the invention 
 of Howe, so Stockbridge took the teachings of 
 Liebig and Johnson, the tables of Wolf, and the 
 experiments of Goessmann, Atwater, and Sturte- 
 vant, and applied them to practical and useful 
 ends. While the system of plant feeding which 
 he employed, or perhaps I should say, the 
 method of application as prescribed in his 
 formulas, did not appeal to the scientific mind 
 in the beginning, it did appeal to the practical 
 farmers, for it met their needs as no other 
 method ever before had done. As good practice 
 and good science must agree in the end, so I 
 believe the scientific world is coming to agree 
 with the practical farmer that the system and 
 the method of application for which Stockbridge 
 stood and labored is as truly scientific as it is 
 thoroughly practical, and to accord him a high 
 place among the workers for the advancement of 
 scientific as well as practical husbandry. 
 
 11 
 
fl^ 
 
 
 FEB 28 1914 
 
 "Read not to contradict and to confute IJ*»iL#»iyi» 
 
 nor to believe and take for granted, but to '* 
 
 weigh and consider." {Bacon.) 
 
 The Problem of Fertility 
 In the Middle West 
 
 Address prepared by W. H. Bowker and Horace Bowker and 
 read by the latter at a Luncheon given to representative Bankers 
 and Railroad Men by the Middle West Soil Improvement Com- 
 mittee of The National Fertilizer Association, in Chicago 
 January 9, 1914. 
 
Thirteenth Cen: 
 
 I United States: 1910. 
 
 P.S.6C2.) No. 2. -j,,jg jjj^p jg 3 photographic reproduction of that published in the U. S. Census 1910, Vol. V. Statistics Compiled trom the Census by W. H. Bowker. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FERTILITY IN 
 THE MIDDLE WEST 
 
 We are met here to discuss fertility or commercial plant foods, 
 the product of the plant food industry. It is the province of our 
 industry to send its ships to the four quarters of the globe to 
 gather fertility and to render it available for man's use. We 
 are now tapping the air for nitrogen, of which there are 35,000 
 tons hanging over each acre of the earth's surface, — an exhaust- 
 less reservoir, soon to be extensively utilized to restore the nitro- 
 gen which has been sent abroad in the shape of cattle and cereals. 
 
 Liebig's Great Discovery 
 
 About seventy-three years ago a chemist, Baron Von Liebig, 
 discovered that bone dissolved in sulphuric acid was more avail- 
 able for plants than the raw bone. Bone and wood ashes had 
 been used as fertilizers for ages, but it was known that bone 
 was slow-acting, that it did not render up its plant food readily 
 enough. It was known that plants took their nourishment 
 from the soil in solution, and must have most of it during 60 
 days of the growing season. It was known that bone was not 
 soluble in water. Liebig reasoned that if it could be made soluble 
 in water, plants would assimilate it more readily. He found by 
 treating bone (a three-lime phosphate) with sulphuric acid, that 
 he took away two parts of lime, forming sulphate of lime, or 
 land plaster, and left the remaining part of lime in combination 
 with phosphorus as a one-lime phosphate which was soluble 
 in water, a form easily assimilated by growing crops, and 
 which would produce an earlier and more vigorous growth. He 
 called this product Superphosphate of Lime. It was one of the 
 great discoveries of the ages, and the beginning of the fertilizer 
 industry. Thus you see that chemistry is the basis of the industry. 
 
Sources of Commercial Plant Foods 
 
 Let us consider the chemical elements in which the fertilizer 
 industry deals. It is known that crops require some thirteen 
 elements for their growth, ranging from nitrogen to iron. It 
 is known that soil and air are abundantly supplied with most of 
 them; that through continuous cropping, without adequate 
 returns, most soils are deficient in nitrogen, phosphorus, potas- 
 sium, and in some cases lacking in lime and sulphur; that as a 
 rule, the three which we need to supply, the great trio, are nitrogen, 
 phosphorus and potash. 
 
 Thus we have searched the world for sources of phosphorus, 
 contained in phosphate of lime. We have found enormous 
 quantities of phosphates in the Carolinas, in Florida, in Tennes- 
 see, and now in Wyoming and Montana. We have mined this 
 phosphate, washed it, and ground it, and following the discovery 
 of Liebig, we have dissolved it and converted it into a super- 
 phosphate, now popularly known as Acid Phosphate. 
 
 We have searched the earth for potash to take the place of 
 the potash which we used to get in wood ashes, and so far we have 
 found only one available source, in Germany, and that seems to be 
 inexhaustible. But it is a monopoly, and we are made to pay 
 much more for it than we should pay. 
 
 We have searched the world for nitrogen, the most costly 
 element of plant food, and we have found it in the enormous 
 nitrate deposits of Chili, and in the coal deposits of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Ohio, and Illinois, or wherever there is soft coal which 
 can be used for coking purposes. This we are recovering in the 
 form of sulphate of ammonia, the use of which should be encour- 
 aged, for the reason that it is not only an excellent source of 
 nitrogen, but it is a home source, lying right here under our feet, 
 by the use of which we can build up our agriculture and keep at 
 home some part of the millions we are now sending abroad for 
 nitrogen, — an economic proposition from any angle you view it. 
 
 We also find nitrogen in the by-products of our packing houses 
 and fisheries, — in the immense quantities of tankages, waste 
 meat and waste fish, which are converted into fertilizers. We also 
 find it in seed meals, like cotton seed and linseed ; but these and 
 the tankages are now being used so extensively for feeding pur- 
 poses that they are not a dependable source. 
 
 Finally in our search for nitrogen we come to the atmosphere, 
 the greatest source of all. Recent discoveries are rendering 
 available the nitrogen of the atmosphere in a chemical known 
 
as Cyanamid, and also in Nitrate of Lime, but the utilization of 
 atmospheric nitrogen at present depends upon a high degree of 
 heat, which can be generated only by means of an electrical cur- 
 rent. Where cheap water power is abundant and an electrical 
 current can be generated at low cost, which cannot be sold for 
 lighting or manufacturing purposes, at that point it can be 
 utilized to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere. A plant is in 
 successful operation at Niagara Falls and one in Norway. Also 
 plans are imder way for developing the great water powers in 
 the Blue Ridge mountains for this purpose. A scheme is also 
 reported in the newspapers to utilize Grand Falls in Labrador for 
 extracting atmospheric nitrogen. 
 
 Anotiier source of nitrogen is the leguminous crops grown by 
 farmers, whereby soil bacteria are utilized. It is known that no 
 plant can thrive above the earth unless smaller plants, known as 
 bacteria, are growing in the earth, — in other words, a lower 
 order of life, which yields up its life to a higher order in the shape 
 of farm crops, which in turn yield up their life that men and 
 animals jnay exist, thus rounding out a marvelous cycle, the 
 connecting links of which we are just beginning to study, and 
 in a small way, to comprehend. 
 
 So we see that the fertilizer industry is something more than 
 mixing a few ingredients together with a shovel on a barn floor. 
 If you men have to deal with commercial, labor and engineer- 
 ing problems, we have all these, and in addition we must know 
 something of the applied sciences, such as chemistry, mineralogy, 
 botany, and bacteriology. If one will take the time to go through 
 a modern fertilizer plant and note its furnaces, lead chambers, 
 retorts and towers, its crushers and grinders, he will see that it 
 is something more than a mixing mill and warehouse. 
 
 Lawes, the Founder of the Industry 
 
 We spoke of Liebig being the inventor of Superphosphate of 
 Lime, the basis of the business, yet the real founder of the fer- 
 tilizer industry, as an industry, was Sir John Lawes of England. 
 He claims to have discovered superphosphate simultaneously 
 with Liebig, but whether he did or not, he was the first man to 
 begin the manufacture of mineral phosphates (the Cambridge 
 coprolites of England) into superphosphate or acid phosphate, 
 and to add nitrogen to it in the shape of sulphate and muriate of 
 ammonia. Later, potash in the shape of German salts was added, 
 making what is now called the "complete fertilizer." 
 
Lawes made a large fortune in the business, a portion of which 
 he devoted to the maintenance of an experiment station on his 
 own estate, Rothamsted, which he inherited. For more than 
 sixty years he conducted a series of experiments with all sorts of 
 fertilizers and fertilizing materials and reported them so accu- 
 rately and so fairly, no matter whether for or against commercial 
 fertilizers, that they have been accepted as authoritative through- 
 out the world. His work was so good that he was knighted by 
 Queen Victoria and since his death the Rothamsted station has 
 been taken over by the Government, and is now conducted as a 
 public experiment station, much like our state experiment 
 stations. 
 
 NoAv the fertilizing industry the world over has copied Lawes, 
 and is making exactly the same things which he made, and which 
 the Lawes Manure Company is making today in England, so if 
 we are not making good things the blame must rest with Lawes. 
 whom we have imitated. By some critics complete fertilizers 
 have been called "soil stimulants" and "patent soil medicines," 
 and for that reason the public is sometimes warned against 
 them. If they are stimulants like rum why should Lawes be 
 praised for manufacturing them, and we, in this country, con- 
 demned for doing the same thing? To laud the one and condemn 
 the other is inconsistent, to say the least. 
 
 The Evolution of the "Complete" Fertilizer 
 
 Let us consider what a so-called complete fertilizer really is, 
 containing the three leading elements, nitrogen, phosphorus, and 
 potash. It is an evolution. Liebig started with ground bone, 
 which contains nitrogen and phosphate of lime. He took prac- 
 tically a thousand pounds of bone and added a thousand pounds 
 of sulphuric acid, the thousand pounds of bone originally contain- 
 ing 4% of nitrogen and 20% of phosphoric acid. When he 
 added the thousand pounds of sulphuric acid he divided the result 
 by two and the final product of dissolved bone contained, there- 
 fore, approximately 2% of nitrogen and 10% of phosphoric acid. 
 In the trade today it]|is]what is called a 2-10 goods. 
 
 What was the next step? Somebody added some concentrated 
 potash, and then we had the "complete" fertilizer containing 
 nitrogen, soluble phosphorus, and potash, or practically a 2-8-2 
 goods, dissolved bone with potash, which some of our critics affect 
 to call a soil or plant stimulant. 
 
Milk is a complete food, containing the three leading elements 
 of food ; namely, protein, in the shape of cheese, fat in the shape 
 of cream, and sugar in the shape of milk sugar. Would you call 
 it a stimulant because of that fact? 
 
 There is no such thing as a stimulant to plants in the sense 
 that alcohol is a stimulant to man. Fertilizers are available 
 plant food. They encourage and sustain growth because they 
 are largely soluble in water, and are easily assimilated by plants, 
 as milk is easily assimilated by children. Fertilizers are "liquid 
 assets" which are as essential in the soil as in business. Crops 
 are living things; they want what they want as and when they 
 want it; failing of it they "go broke." There are some who go 
 so far as to say that anything is a stimulant to plants which 
 makes them grow. In that sense, water, the greatest known 
 solvent, is a stimulant, and sunshine is a stimulant, and the elec- 
 tric light may yet prove to be a stimulant. However, to satirize 
 fertilizers by classing them with rum is neither scientific nor fair. 
 
 The "Filler" in Fertilizers 
 
 A great many people think fertilizers contain "filler" or 
 extraneous material. They are encouraged to think so by those 
 interested in the sale of chemicals produced in and outside of 
 this country. When Liebig added 1,000 pounds of sulphuric 
 acid to 1,000 pounds of bone, he practically had a ton of half the 
 strength of the original bone, but it had been rendered soluble 
 hence much more valuable. In the process there is some shrink- 
 age, perhaps 10% or 200 pounds, which gives room to add potash 
 in the form of a German potash salt, and then the ton is rounded 
 out and the mixture is a "complete fertilizer," containing the 
 three elements, — nitrogen, available phosphorus, and potash, 
 but where is the filler — that bugbear, that scarecrow, that thing 
 which is held up by some of our critics to discredit our wares? 
 There was no filler in Liebig's Dissolved Bone or in Lawes' 
 "Complete Fertilizer" made from dissolved bone, for there was 
 no room for any; and there is practically no filler in fertilizers 
 today, for the reason that there is little or no room for any. 
 Moreover, there is another and more potent reason, namely, it 
 costs money to assemble and prepare extraneous matter, even 
 common sand, when by proper balancing of materials it is not 
 necessary. A chemist who figured his formulas so that it cost 
 25 cents or even 10 cents a ton "to fill up" would soon lose his 
 job, 
 
 7 
 
Did it ever occur to you that only 15% of pure milk is solids 
 or food, and that the remaining 85% is water? Can you separate 
 the water from the milk and still have a white, limpid fluid? 
 The water in milk is the "normal water of composition" which 
 holds and carries the actual nourishment of milk. So in fertil- 
 izers, take nitrate of soda, one of the most popular fertilizer 
 chemicals ; 100 lbs. contains 15 pounds of nitrogen; the remaining 
 85 pounds is the "normal oxygen, soda and water of composition." 
 Take the most concentrated fertilizer chemical salt in use, namely, 
 muriate of potash. It contains only 50 pounds of potash in the 
 hundred pounds. 
 
 Finally, take one of the most concentrated complete fertilizers 
 which the industry puts out; it contains but 25% of actual plant 
 food in a ton, or 500 pounds of nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric 
 acid added together. What is the remaining 1,500 pounds? 
 Naturally one not familiar with chemistry thinks it is so called 
 " filler " but it is nothing of the kind. It is made up of organic 
 matter, salts, alkalis and acids, which are the carriers or con- 
 tainers of plant food, as the water of milk is the natural carrier 
 of the food of milk, as the fibre of meat is the natural carrier of 
 the protein and fat of meat. And right here it is well to observe 
 that one of the medium grades of fertilizer on the market, 3-8-4, 
 which equals 15 units of plant food to a ton, is exactly the same 
 number of units that nitrate of soda contains. Does anyone 
 claim that nitrate contains any filler in the popular sense of that 
 term because it carries only 15 units or 300 pounds of plant food 
 in a ton? 
 
 It may be urged that by using concentrated chemicals one 
 can make the same grade with two-thirds of the bulk. So he 
 can in some cases, but such mixtures would cake and would not 
 be drillable in a machine. Moreover, they would not supply 
 the forms of plant food which crops need. Besides, the exclu- 
 sive use of these concentrated chemicals would displace just so 
 much by-product plant foods, which it is good to use, both from 
 the standpoint of economy and from that of making stable, 
 drillable goods. No sound economist or wise agronomist advises 
 the exclusive use of concentrated chemicals any more than he 
 would advise the exclusive use of concentrates in the feeding of 
 live stock. 
 
 We have gone into this matter with some detail because the 
 imputation of the use of fillers is so often thrown up against the 
 industry to injure it. Now while we do not say that fillers are never 
 
 8 
 
used, it is the exception rather than the rule, and the exceptions 
 are usually where they are needed as "conditioners" and in that 
 case they are usually such materials as not infrequently contribute 
 to the sum total of plant food. Fillers, in the shape of extraneous 
 matter, would be disclosed in the analysis, which rarely occurs. 
 As a matter of fact, they exist chiefly in the imagination of the 
 critics. 
 
 Barren (?) East and Fertile (?) West Compared 
 
 It has been said that where fertilizers have been used longest 
 in the East, there the soil is worn out. The Crop Census does 
 not show it. On the contrary, where attention is paid to rota- 
 tion of crops, and to keeping up the humus, the Census shows 
 that the East is producing, even of the staple crops, much more 
 per acre than is grown in the Middle West*. Moreover, where 
 fertilizers have been used extensively and intelligently, there the 
 soils are increasing in fertility and agriculture is prospering. In 
 Europe they find it pays to make a fertile soil still more fertile by 
 the use of chemical fertilizers. Gov. Herrick, our minister to 
 France, writes: 
 
 "All the states along the Atlantic seaboard now use com- 
 mercial fertilizers. Eventually there will not be an acre in 
 the Nation that cannot profitably use fertilizers. If used in 
 the smallest European proportions of $6 to the acre, the ag- 
 gregate sum bulks so large as to stagger the imagination." 
 
 Fertilizers Serve Other Purposes 
 
 Commercial fertilizers, in addition to supplying plant food, 
 serve other purposes which are often lost sight of. Because they 
 supply this food in soluble, active forms, they improve quality; 
 as in the case of grains, they stiffen the straw and fill out kernels; 
 but what is quite as important, they hasten maturity, reducing 
 the percentage of soft corn or wheat. Oftentimes they are the 
 best crop insurance a farmer can employ. 
 
 In New England, commercial fertilizers were first used as 
 "starters," as concentrated foods are used to start a calf to an 
 early vigorous maturity. Before the days of dissolved bone 
 they could not raise corn successfully in New Hampshire. The 
 seasons, as a rule, were not long enough to mature it. Now 
 almost every county in the state has its corn king who raises 
 more corn per acre than the average yield of the Corn Belt. 
 
 ^See Addenda. 
 
New Hampshire, according to the Census, produced in 1910 
 46 bushels of corn to IlHnois' 39 bushels per acre, and Iowa's 
 37 bushels. 
 
 Thirty years ago they came near giving up the growing of 
 wheat in the Genesee Valley in New York, because of the ravages 
 of the Hessian fly. Someone tried commercial fertilizer and 
 found it hastened the growth of the wheat plant so that it got 
 ahead of the fly and for years the wheat industry in the Genesee 
 Valley was preserved. Now commercial manures are used ex- 
 tensively in that valley on every variety of crop. 
 
 Sole Source of Fertility 
 
 In the East, from the use of fertilizers for a particular purpose 
 on a particular crop, their use has extended to all crops and in 
 many cases they have become the sole source of applied fertility. 
 Take for example the potato crop. It was discovered that better 
 potatoes could be grown on fertilizers than on stable manure and 
 the result is that in Aroostook County, Maine, more than 25,000,- 
 000 bushels of potatoes are grown exclusively on high grade com- 
 mercial fertilizer. They are producing in that county 300 bushels 
 per acre against 92 in the Middle West. The county reminds 
 one of Iowa. Much of the land is recently cleared and all the 
 soil is naturally fertile ; but they find it pays to make it still 
 more fertile by the liberal use of fertilizers. It is conservatively 
 estimated that 60,000 tons are used each year in this one 
 county. The bankers in Aroostook County will tell you that fer- 
 tilizers have put that county on the map commercially as well as 
 agriculturally. 
 
 A still better illustration is the cotton crop of the South. Any 
 banker or railroad man will tell you that the South is absolutely 
 dependent on the fertilizer industry to grow the cotton crop. It 
 is true that they are not producing as much cotton per acre as 
 they ought to produce and will produce with improved seed, 
 crop rotation, and better methods of cultivation. It is also 
 true that they are not producing in the South as much corn per 
 acre as is being produced in Illinois and in New England, and we 
 in New England are profitably producing on our so-called "ex- 
 hausted farms" by the use of fertilizers, almost 50% more per 
 acre than is being produced in the Corn Belt, or 45.5 bushels in 
 New England to 32.8 bushels in the Corn Belt. 
 
 But the South will never produce corn so long as it can produce 
 cash crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, and citrus fruits. And you 
 in the Middle West ought to be thankful that it will not. It is 
 
 10 
 
your place to grow the corn, the cattle, the wheat, and the oats, 
 which the South cannot so well produce. Let each latitude grow 
 the crops naturally adapted to it and in the end it will make for 
 better conditions the country over. 
 
 Some Jolts and Some Boosts 
 
 New England has prided herself upon being advanced, but 
 recently she has been jolted out of her complacency, the last 
 severe jolt being the collapse of her railway systems. She has 
 waked up to find that Chicago is competing with her in music 
 and art, Indiana in literature, and Wisconsin in progressive legis- 
 lation, while the Middle West is sending men to reorganize her 
 railroads. The Middle West claimed for years, and justly so, 
 that agriculturally it Avas the richest section in the country, but 
 the last Census gave her also a bad jolt. It showed that she was 
 falling behind in agricultural production, and in the number of 
 resident farm owners. Viewed from the outside it would appear 
 that the two most important questions in the Middle West are, 
 how to increase production and how to deal with the tenant 
 farmer. 
 
 A Boost,— J. J. Hill's Experiments 
 
 James J. Hill has conducted some wonder-working experi- 
 ments with fertilizers, which have not received the attention they 
 deserved in the West. Is it because the West does not want to 
 admit that it needs rejuvenation, or is it because she is complacent? 
 Hill showed in one season, by the use of fertilizers, that he could 
 double the yield of cereals in the Middle Northwest. It matters 
 not at this time whether it was done at a profit. The important 
 thing is to demonstrate that yields can be doubled by a certain 
 treatment. Thirty-six years ago Bell demonstrated that he 
 could talk over a wire from one room to another. Today we 
 know the result. The fertilizer industry has nothing to fear 
 from such experiments as Hill's, even if all of them are not at first 
 commercially successful. It has nothing to fear from any ex- 
 periments provided they are carried on without bias and by men 
 who have no hobby to ride. 
 
 Will it Pay? No Longer an Academic Question 
 
 The value of commercial plant food has passed beyond the ex- 
 perimental stage in Europe and in the eastern part of this 
 country. Why not accept the testimony of seventy-five years 
 
 11 
 
at Rohamsted, of fifty years at Halle, and of thirty years in 
 Georgia and in Maine. I sometimes wonder if the agricultural 
 teachers and writers in the West are not standing in the way of 
 agricultural progress by still considering as an academic ques- 
 tion the value and need of fertilizers. The question is not — 
 Are commercial fertilizers good and useful ? — hut will it pay to 
 use them as James J. Hill has done in his part of the country. 
 To my mind, Mr. Hill has answered the question, "will it pay?" 
 in the affirmative. By the use of a little over $5 worth of fer- 
 tilizer per acre he practically doubled the yield of wheat, oats 
 and barley, and you can figure whether it paid or not. I wish 
 that other railway officials might follow his splendid example. 
 
 The Hill experiments are along the lines of intensive agricul- 
 ture. The fertilizer industry stands for intensive agriculture, 
 which includes good seed, thorough cultivation, rotation of crops, 
 cover crops, and the plowing in of green crops wherever it is 
 necessary to keep up the humus of the soil. Its best fields are 
 where the best agricultural practice is in vogue. 
 
 The Industry vs. Criticism 
 
 The industry knows its own shortcomings and it is not unmind- 
 ful of the benefits of criticism, but in the face of criticism and 
 opposition it has grown in the last forty years from half a million 
 to nearly 7,000,000 tons. In the last five year Census period 
 the use of complete fertilizer increased 104 per cent. 
 
 Criticism and ridicule which retards the day of the introduc- 
 tion and use of commercial plant foods in the Middle West serves 
 no economic purpose. It is as shortsighted as it is unsound. In 
 Europe, government- paid officials and teachers who are unfair 
 to legitimate industry are the exception. State and Federal paid 
 teachers who call fertilizers "soil stimulants," and "patent soil 
 medicines," who imply that they are composed of "fillers," and 
 who deliberately exaggerate the profits of the industry to dis- 
 courage their use, are not fair, to say the least. They neither 
 serve the true interests of agriculture nor promote the welfare of 
 the Nation which employs them. 
 
 It would seem that an industry which has stood the test of 
 three-quarters of a century, that conserves every pound of plant 
 food it can find, that delves in the earth and taps the air in 
 order that more abundant and cheaper fertility may be supplied, 
 is an industry that is quite worth while. 
 
 12 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 SOME JOLTS AND SOME BOOSTS 
 Taken from the Census and from Experiments 
 
 According to 1910 Census Bulletin "Agriculture," page 18: 
 
 The average yield of Corn in New England increased from 39.4 bu. per 
 acre to 45.2 bu. or nearly 15% 
 
 In Illinois the yield stood still at 38.8 bu. 
 
 In Iowa it dropped from 39.1 bu. to 37.1 bu. or 5%. 
 
 In Kansas it dropped from 27.8 bu. to 19.1 bu. or 31%. 
 
 In Nebraska it dropped from 28.8 bu. to 24.8 bu. or nearly 14%. 
 
 In Missouri it dropped from 28.1 bu. to 26.9 bu. or 4%. 
 
 It is suggested that better seed, better cultivation and added fertility from 
 some source would improve conditions, as the same things have done in New 
 England and in Old England. 
 
 JAMES/. HILL'S 
 Wonder Wording Experiments with Fertilizers 
 
 (Condensed from World's Work, April, 1913) 
 
 In one year Mr. Hill demonstrated in the middle North West that he could 
 practically double the yield of wheat, barley and oats by the use of fertilizers. 
 The experiment was tried on five-acre plats on 151 farms (755 acres in all) 
 scattered along the Great Northern route in Minnesota and North Dakota, 
 the most extensive practical experiment the world has ever seen, as follows: 
 
 Average of the Great Northern U. S. Census Average of Minnesota Increase 
 
 Plats With Fertilizer and No. Dakota without Fertilizer 
 
 Wheat 30 bu. per acre Wheat 15.8 bu. per acre 14.2 
 
 Barley 47 Barley 21.9 " " " 25.1 
 
 Oats 71 ' Oats 31. 40. 
 
 The grain in each case from the fertilizer plats was much superior in quality 
 and brought a higher price. Each acre received $5.39 worth of fertilizer. It 
 can easily be calculated whether the increased yield paid or not. It is the 
 experience the world over where commercial plant foods are used intelli- 
 gently, that not only are larger yields of better quality obtained, but the land 
 steadily increases in productiveness. 
 
 13 
 
WHEAT EXPERIMENTS 
 In England, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois 
 
 Dr. Cyril G. Hopkins of the University of Illinois gives the following statis- 
 tics in "Science," October 3, 1913: 
 
 England — As an average of 60 years where wheat has been grown yea r 
 after year on the same land at Rothamsted: 
 
 Unfertilized Land produced 12 .6 bu. per acre 
 
 Farm Manure produced 35.4 " " " 
 
 Commercial Plant Food produced 37. " " " 
 
 Pennsylvania — As an average of 24 years the wheat yields at Pennsylvania 
 State College, when grown in a four-year rotation, varied as follows: 
 Unfertilized Land produced 10. 1 bu. per acre 
 
 Farm Manure produced 24.1 " " " 
 
 Commercial Plant Food produced 24.8 " " " 
 
 Ohio — As an average of 19 years the wheat yield at the Ohio Experiment 
 Station, the wheat being grown in a five-year rotation with clover, timothy, 
 corn and oats on five different series of plots, so that every crop might be 
 represented every year. 
 
 Unfertilized Land produced 10.2 bu. per acre 
 
 Farm Manure produced 21.7 " " " 
 
 Commercial Plant Food produced 26.9 " " " 
 
 Illinois — On five Experiment fields of the University of Illinois, located in 
 different parts of the state the following results with wheat are given for 1913. 
 Unfertilized average of the 5 fields 13. 1 bu. per acre 
 
 Fertilized with Organic Manures, Lime- 
 stone, Phosphorus and Potassium, 
 average of 5 fields 32.3 
 
 Average increase 
 
 19.2 
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND THE MIDDLE WEST 
 COMPARED 
 
 The following figures are based on the U. S. Census 
 
 New England, using $1.30 worth of fertilizer 
 per acre of improved land, produces 
 
 The Middle West States, using 4 cents worth 
 of fertilizer per acre of improved land, pro- 
 duce 
 
 Maine, using $1.72 worth of fertilizer per 
 acre of improved land, produces 
 
 Corn 
 (Av. Bu.) 
 per acre 
 
 45. 
 
 33, 
 
 43, 
 
 Wheat 
 (Av. Bu.) 
 per acre 
 
 24. 
 
 17. 
 
 25. 
 
 Potatoes 
 (Av. Bu.) 
 per acre 
 
 177. 
 
 92. 
 210. 
 
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