otash, they are sometimes called
"complete" manures or fertilizers. In some parts of the country all
commercial fertilizers are called "guano."

_Many brands._

These raw materials are mixed in many different proportions and many
dealers have special brands for special crops. There are consequently
large numbers of brands of fertilizers which vary in the amounts,
proportions and availability of the plant foods they contain. For
instance, in 1903, twenty-three fertilizer manufacturers offered for
sale ninety-six different brands in the State of Rhode Island. In
Missouri one hundred and ten brands, made by sixteen different
manufacturers, were offered for sale. Eighty-three manufacturers
placed six hundred and forty-four brands on the market in New York
State during the same year. Of one hundred and twenty brands
registered for sale in Vermont in the spring of 1904, there were
seventeen mixtures for corn and thirty-four for potatoes.

The result of this is more or less confusion on the part of the farmer
in purchasing fertilizers, and with many a farmer it is a lottery as
to whether or not he is buying what his crop or his soil needs.

Some of the manufacturers are not above using poor, low grade, raw
materials in making these mixtures.

This means that the farmer should make himself familiar with the
subject of fertilizers if he desires to use them intelligently and
economically.

_Safeguard for the farmer._

As a safeguard to the buyer of fertilizers the State laws require that
every brand put on the market shall be registered and that every bag
or package sold shall have stated on it an analysis showing the
amounts of nitrogen, or its equivalent in ammonia, the soluble
phosphoric acid, the reverted phosphoric acid, the insoluble
phosphoric acid, and the potash.

This registration is generally made at the State experiment station,
and the director of the station is instructed to take samples of these
brands and have them analyzed, and publish the results together with
the analysis guaranteed by the maker.

These analyses are published in bulletin form and should be in the
hands of every farmer who makes a practice of using commercial
fertilizers.

The manufacturers of fertilizers comply with the law by printing on
the bag or package the per cents of plant food in the fertilizers, and
these statements in the great majority of cases agree favorably with
the analyses of the experiment stations, but they do no