EXAMINATION OF FERTILIZING MATERIALS,
FERTILIZERS, AND MANURES.
PART FIRST.
PRELIMINARY TREATMENT AND PHOSPHATES.
1. Introduction.—In the first volume the principal plant foods occurring in soils have been named and the methods of estimating them described. As fertilizers are classed those materials which are added to soils to supply supposed deficiencies in plant foods, or to render more available the stores already present. There is little difference between the terms fertilizer and manure. In common language the former is applied to goods prepared for the farmer by the manufacturer or mixer, while the latter is applied to the stores accumulated about the stables or made elsewhere on the farm. Thus it is common to speak of a barnyard or stall manure and of a commercial fertilizer.
One of the objects of the analysis of soils, as described in the first volume of this work, is to determine the character of the fertilizer which should be added to a field in order to secure its maximum fertility.
One purpose of the present part is to determine the fitness of offered fertilizing material to supply the deficiencies which may be revealed by a proper study of the needs of the soil.
2. Natural Fertilizers.—In the succession of geologic epochs which has marked the natural history of the earth there have been brought together in deposits of greater or less magnitude the stores of plant food unused by growing crops or which may once have been part of vegetable and animal organisms. Some of these deposits have been mentioned in the first volume, paragraphs 11, 12, and 18.
For a full description of the extent and origin of these deposits the reader is referred to works on economic geology. These deposits are the chief sources of the commercial fertilizers which are offered to the farmers of to-day and to which the agricultural analyst is called upon to devote much of his time and labor. The methods of determining the chemical composition and agricultural value of these deposits, as practiced by the leading chemists of this country and Europe, will be fully set forth in the following pages.
3. Waste Matters as Fertilizing Materials.—In addition to the natural products just mentioned the analyst will be called on also to deal with a great variety of waste materials which, in the last few years, have been saved from the débris of factories and abattoirs, and prepared for use on the farm. Among these waste matters may be mentioned, bones, horns, hoofs, hair, tankage, dried blood, fish scrap, oil cakes, ashes, sewage, and sewage precipitates, offal of all kinds, leather scraps, and organic débris in general.
It is important, before beginning an analysis, to know the origin of the substances to be determined. As has already been pointed out in volume first the process which would be accurate with a substance of a mineral origin might lead to error if applied to the same element in organic combination. This is particularly true of phosphorus and potash. A simple microscopic examination will usually enable the analyst to determine the nature of the sample. In this manner, in the case of a phosphate, it would at once be determined whether it was bone, mineral, or basic slag. The odor, color, and general consistence will also aid in the determination.