R. S. SEARLE. Do you vary your complete fertilizers with the crop to which they are applied? In other words, do you put more potash in your fertilizer for corn-fodder than for wheat, or do you use the same fertilizer for all?

Mr. HICKMAN. We are in a transitory state, passing from the old to the new, and changing our methods and theories; thus far the only safe thing which we can do is to find out what our soil lacks and what the crop wants and then supply it; we had better have too much of it than too little; when a farmer knows exactly what he ought to know, or what he is privileged to know, and which I hope in time he will know, he may be able to apply exactly what the crop needs (not more or less), but at present we must be content with getting enough, even at the risk of wasting some. It is a very safe rule to apply at least fifty per cent. more than the crops need.

Hon A. L. TAGGART of Montgomery. Is it profitable to use four hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre? If four hundred pounds is better than two hundred, as you have said, is eight hundred better than four hundred, proportionately.

Mr. HICKMAN. The term "four hundred pounds of phosphate" is very indefinite; there are four hundred and sixty-four kinds now sold in the State; they vary in actual value from three dollars and fifty cents to forty dollars per ton. If you take a fertilizer containing twelve per cent. of phosphoric acid, one per cent..of potash, and the same of nitrogen, and apply eight hundred pounds per acre, you put on more than your crop can utilize, and in this sense waste it; but it is not wasted, but is stored up in the soil for future crops. I have known fifteen hundred pounds per acre used with profit; it is not so much the amount that you spend as the amount that you can get back. I think that a fault with many of our commercial fertilizers, is that they contain too much phosphoric acid in proportion to their nitrogen; the latter ingredient should in most cases be increased; the phosphoric acid is often (especially in large applications) in excess.

Hon. A. L. TAGGART. Why is it that Peruvian guano produces a better crop of wheat than barn-yard manure?

Mr. HICKMAN. It does not always do so by any means; that may have been the gentleman's experience, but is not that of all. Peruvian guano has the same fault as South Carolina rock-it contains an excessive proportion of one element (nitrogen), and is deficient in the other two, phosphoric acid and potash; it is not well balanced.

Mr. EDWARDS. Would it not produce a stiff straw that would not lodge?

Mr. HICKMAN. No, sir; in large amounts it would have the same effect as a large application of stable manure, and would throw the crop down before filling.

Mr. EDWARDS. Do you know of a fertilizer in the market which has the proper proportion of phosphoric acid? If a fertilizer has twelve per cent. of phosphoric acid, is there one running to nine or even seven of potash?

Mr. HICKMAN. No, sir; except special manures for potatoes, which often run as high as five or six of potash. You note in the charts the amount of potash in corn-fodder, oats and wheat straw and hay; these the farmer usually feeds on the farm, and thus keeps the potash at home; but on the other hand the phosphoric acid and nitrogen enter largely into the grain and are very often sold off the farm. There is an accumulation of potash. In such cases, with a fertilizer having

a large percentage of phosphoric acid and a low one of potash, you will get as good or better results; the manure will thus vary with the plan of farming.

A MEMBER. Suppose that you have a commercial fertilizer which contains fifteen per cent. of phosphoric acid, a large amount perhaps, and three of nitrogen, with two of potash, that would make twenty per cent.; there are still eighty per cent remaining. On this I would base the following questions: Of what does this eighty per cent. consist? And would it not be better to buy the elements on which you do place a manurial value and exclude the others?

Mr. HICKMAN. In theory the gentleman is right, but in practice he is wrong. Take for example pure bone; it will contain about four hundred and thirteen pounds of these valuable ingredients to the ton, and yet it is not adulterated; you have one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven pounds of worthless matter to the ton, but you cannot get shut of it; the process which would take it out would be too expensive to permit of its application. You do not get anything pure; not even mankind.

Hon. C. C. MUSSELMAN of Somerset. I, for one, have very little faith in this homœopathic or pepper-box quackery for the cure of sick or worn-out soils. While there are a few commercial fertilizers worth buying, there are hundreds, yes, about two-thirds of all the brands of the store goods now sold that have not the commercial value or chemicals in them that it sells for. One brand is sold for fifteen dollars, while the commercial value is only eighty-six cents; another is sold for ten dollars, while the chemicals in it are worth only thirty two cents; another is sold for forty five dollars, while the commercial value is only six dollars and sixteen cents. But worse than this, many brands are imposed upon the farmers that have no value at all; and still worse, some are palmed off on the innocent farmers that are not only worthless, but an actual injury to crops. Is this not imposition? Yes, worse. It is robbery. It is true that the State Board of Agriculture had a law passed compelling the manufacturer to give the analysis on the sack, but how many farmers know what it means if they see the analysis on the goods. They generally listen to, and take the instructions of some agent that generally talks about a thing of which he knows very little, practically or, theoretically, trying to make farmers believe it does not pay to lime, or haul manure any distance, and keeps talking until the farmers begin to wonder which of the two it would pay best, to move the barn or the dung pile. Nobody will haul dung and lime if we can carry the fertilizer out in our vest pockets. Their theory teaches waste and bad ecomony. Lime and manure, the great natural fertilizers, are to remain dead stock in the storehouse of the earth, in order to give these public benefactors a chance to entrench themselves behind their sand bags! For which we are asked to send our money to New York and Chicago, and other places a thousand miles away.

My remarks are aimed at the great bulk of this worthless stuff, and not at the few honest brands that are manufactured and sold. A good fine concentrated fertilizer, whether made at home or aboard, and drilled in with the grain, will generally give a start, and show a good and immediate effect, as it generally goes all right into the plant. But we must look to something else to lay the foundation of a fertile soil. Stable manure will do it as far as it goes, but it is upon lime that we must count as the fertilizer, all other fertilizers are mere helps. It is

emphatically so in our part of the State, confirmed by practice and theory. Where nature has furnished a sufficient supply of lime, it need not be done artificially. Lime is one of the five grand divisions of a fertile soil, and without it not a spear of grass can grow. The little bulk of commercial fertilizer acts only chemically, while lime acts chemically, physically, directly and indirectly. It will do all and more than the best commercial fertilizer. I venture to assert that lime will give all the different elements, such as nitrogen, potash, ammonia and other elements derived from the best commercial fertilizers. then in addition lime acts physically as an ameliorator, and chemically as a neutalizer. I can buy twenty tons of lime for the price you pay for one ton of commercial fertilizer. Lime converts sulphuric acid in the soil into sulphate of lime which is land plaster, which has the power to attract and fix ammonia, the very heart of manure, there you get your nitrogen, and by the burning of shells and fossils contained in limestone you get phosphoric acid. I know that some will deny this last assertion, but so says Prof. Johnson, in his work on agricultural chemistry. I know too that I am treading on the toes of hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of agents of this high sounding and sweet smelling store goods; but as a member of the State Board of Agriculture, it becomes my duty to expose all frauds and impositions practiced upon the farmers, of which I am one. And I can assure you that pictures sent around to look at, and the bottles that are sent about with their contents for farmers to smell at, are becoming a stench in the nostrils of intelligent farmers. And I know, too, that the one who opposes this pepper box and picture farming is called old fogy and behind the age. What I say of commercial fertilizers I shall not apply to good, pure bone, of which I am an advocate. But I repeat that in our part of the county nothing is so cheap and effectual as a judicious application of lime to fertilize the soil.

J. A. GUNDY of Union. I would make this reply to what Mr. Musselman has urged because I have had practical experience in the matter: I divided a tract into twentieths of an acre. I am a surveyor, and the work was carefully done with a compass and chain. On two of these plots I put nothing in the way of a fertilizer; on one I put eighty-five per cent. of potash, ten pounds; on another fifteen pounds of bone black; on another twenty pounds of dried blood; on another two of these elements; on another two others; and to another all three were applied; on one I put half a load of barn-yard manure, and on one one and one-half bushels of plaster, and on another one and one-half bushels of lime. We weighed both corn and fodder carefully; I have not the exact results with me, but I remember that the lime appeared to have damaged the crop, or at least it lessened the yield; it cost me six cents per bushel. The plaster did little or no good, and the complete fertilizer (containing all three elements) did by far the best. The barn-yard manure was fourth on the list of yields; these were actual experiments in the field.

Hon. C. C. MUSSELMAN. My doctrine is that lime is indirectly a fertilizer, insomuch as it utilizes plant food which otherwise might be lost.

Mr. HICKMAN. One year ago last winter I had the pleasure of addressing an assemblage of farmers at Uniontown, in Fayette county, and there we had up the efficiency and action of lime. Many of them took precisely the same ground as has my friend from Somerset

[Judge Musselman]. One of them asked me if I would put fertilizer upon part of his field in competition with lime, and whether I would stake the value of the fertilizer upon the result. I told him that I would do so, and we entered into an agreement. It was upon a farm where the iron company was taking out limestone and utilizing a part of it, but leaving a considerable amount of finely broken stone not wanted at the furnace, so he had nothing to do but haul the stone to the pile, pile it up, and burn it; the coal was on the land, and the only charge against the lime was for actual labor. He put this lime in competition with our fertilizer on one-half of the twenty acres of land; he understood the value of lime as too many understand it, and he was going to manufacture all the elements of plant food from the soil by the use of lime. He applied seven thousand bushels to his half of the field, or at the rate of seven hundred bushels per acre. Hon. C. C. MUSSELMAN. That was entirely too much and injured the land.

Mr. HICKMAN. That is the true solution of it. on at the rate of six hundred pounds per acre. lime badly, of course.

The fertilizer was put
The fertilizer beat the

In Montgomery county I met with a man named Cugler who was applying lime and had great faith in it. The gentleman with whom I was staying said, "I wish that you would go over and talk with Cugler." I did so. He had just reached home with a four-horse load of lime, and, after putting his horses away, came into the house to talk to us. I said, "We came over to tell you our theory of farming and to offer a few suggestions." We sat there and talked of the action. and value of lime, and finally I said, "I want you to apply your lime to two or three plots and a good fertilizer to two or three others; give the matter a fair trial and see if you do not become more progressive." I have never seen him since, but I have heard from him. He is now convinced that he then learned something, and from that day to this has never hauled another load of lime.

R. S. SEARLE. We are now discussing the question of how to improve worn out or exhausted land by the use of commercial fertilizers. How would you use them?

Mr. HICKMAN. Suppose, in answer to that question, I give the experience of Thomas Gale of Hainesville, Kent county, Maryland. Mr. Gale had assigned to him about six hundred acres of very poor land; a reasonable corn crop had not been known to grow upon it. I was visiting an agricultural club near by and he sent for me to come and look at his land and tell him what to do with it. Upon the tract there were some buildings, but he was poor. I said, "There is only one thing in the world for you to do, and that is fertilize it, and you must be liberal with your fertilizers." People there only use two hundred pounds per acre, and I said that he must use six hundred pounds per acre. He said, "That is worth more that the land. I understand that in some cases you have furnished the fertilizer, taking your pay out of the increase in the crop. Is your faith strong enough to do that in my case?" I answered, "I will give you six hundred pounds for every acre but one (the field contained thirty-two acres), and you are to put the field in corn; you may take from every acre as much as is produced upon the acre with no fertilizer." He. answered, "You are the man that I have been looking for, how about the wheat which follows the corn?" I replied, "We will divide the wheat crop with you and give you four hundred pounds more per acre for

it." I sent him for the corn six hundred pounds per acre, of which four hundred pounds were plowed down and two hundred put in the hill when planted. It was not a favorable year for corn, but people came miles to see it. When he hauled in his corn he measured it. In May he sent the corn to Baltimore and paid six cents per bushel in freight and weighing fees. When I came to settle with him he gave me my money and I found that I had the price of the fertilizer (forty-two dollars per ton), six per cent for the money, and one hundred and forty-one dollars over; of this I returned him one-half. In the succeeding wheat crop there was an excess over the cost of the fertilizer of sixty-five dollars, so that I could have made him a present of two hundred dollars and obtained full price for my fertilizer. The field was sown with timothy and clover in the spring, and next year he mowed it and had more than any other man in that section of the county, and had five or six bushels of clover seed per

acre.

After mowing it for awhile, he turned it under for wheat, and applied five hundred pounds of fertilizer, and had thirty-five bushels of wheat per acre. That field is known as "the Hickman field" and will be so known for some time to come. Last year I got from him the returns from one hundred and thirty-five acres, and upon that result I wrote and read a report before the county agricultural society, and I am free to say that it has attracted great attention. He had some doubts about buying a machine for threshing, but I said to him, “Buy the machine and pay for it off the one hundred and thirty-five acres." That one hundred and thirty-five acres is now worth a great deal more than the original tract, and I saw him threshing sixteen hundred bushels of wheat off his poor land. He has a good bank account, and pays his hands promptly. You may write him for the facts as I have given them to you.

J. A. HERR. Does not the mechanical condition of the soil have something to do with the action of the fertilizer?

Mr. HICKMAN. Not so much as the fertilizer has upon the mechanical condition of the soil.

J. A. HERR. Must not every one be, to a certain extent at least, his own experimenter?

Mr. HICKMAN. Certainly; and in the present condition of our knowledge this is the only way in which we can avoid errors.

Secretary EDGE. Is not forty per cent. South Carolina rock more economical than the ordinary grades, which give but fifteen per cent. and is it not a rule that the higher grades of fertilizers are the most economical?

Mr. HICKMAN. By transportation fertilizers, have their value increased, and the highers grades, by the decrease in bulk, cost less in freight; hence they are usually most economical.

H. M. ENGLE of Lancaster. Some in our county have been very successful in obtaining good crops by the use of South Carolina rock alone.

Mr. HICKMAN. That indicates that the soil is not deficient in potash, and that the crop obtains sufficient nitrogen from some other source than the manure.

Note by the Secretary. The discussion as here given and much that was not preserved, from the fact that the lecture and discussion was illustrated by diagrams, indicates that at the Bucks County Institute there was a difference of opinion between Mr. Hickman and a