Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1869-02-26

Its Products and Trade; Its Relations to
Agriculture; Its Interests, Pol.
Icy, Character, and Claims
to Public Confidence.

Southern and Middle States
It will be admitted that with the crude ele
ments of fertility afforded by Nature, it is
within the scope of human ability, aided by
capital, enterprise and science, to furnish con-
centrated commercial fertilizer Of real erccl-
Ience.
It is of the highest Importance that such a
fertilizer should be furnished at the Io,rcst
possible cost, in order that the outlay required
may not preclude it's genera! and liberal oppA-
cation. It is also necessary to the general use
of such an article, that the character, RESPONSE
bility and facilities of the producers should be
such as to afford reasonable guarantee that
the fertilizer brought into market may be
relied upon for present and continued ercel-
lence.
It is true that many farmers are deferred
from the use of fertilizers, other than Peruvian
Guano, by q want of confidence in their con-
tinued reliability, though convinced of their
present value. They adhere to Peruvian
Guano, though its price be too high to justify
its liberal use, and though experience teaches
them its defects, which are manifest in its
tendency to produce excessive growth without
corresponding yield; in its tendency to e1-
haustion; in its injurious effects in time Of
severe drought, &c., all of which result from
the incorporation of its elements.
This want of confidence is not unnatural,
and arises from two principal causes: First
Fertilizers have been placed upon the markets
and commended to farmers, which, either from
ignorance or the inability Of the producers or
from less excusable causes have proved from
the first or after awhile of little or no value,
to the serious loss of the consumer both of
time and money.
condly-Disastrous seasons occur, in which
crops fail from the intervention of natural
causes, in which event the consumer is pre-
disposed to asoribe the failure in part at least
to the particular fertilizer used, however ex-
cellent it may have been, even though his
neighbor realize as great failure from Peru
Wan Guano. The thought is suggested, that,
if Peruvian ,Guano had been used the failure
would not at least have been so great hence
fertilizer possessing the highest value, may be,
and often is, hastily condemned and its use
retarded to the detriment of the agricultural
public.
There is no power in Peruvian Guano or any
other fertilizer to perform its functions if con-
travened by natural causes, else rich bottom
lands would never fail to yield crop, when it
is known fact they do fail as frequently as
fertilized lands.
A benefcent Providence has aggregated the
crude elements Of fertility in exhaustless guam
titles all over the world-upon islands of the
sea, and in the sea itself and elsewhere.
Nature, however, does not yield her treasures
without an equivalent. Coal is found en-
bedded in mountains; the precious metals are
held bound in the quartz rock, and are adapt
ed to the uses for which Nature designed
them, only at the cost Of labor, enterprise and
capital. So also these deposits in their natural
state are not in condition for practical utility,
but modern science has developed methods by
which they are capable of the highest utility
to the most important of all interests Hence,
while nature furnishes the crude material, and
science the method still capital, skill, enterprise
and labor are required to adapt them to the
purposes designed by Nature.
The fertilizer introduced by Us in 1865,
under the trade mark of Soluble Pacific G,tano,
is the product of the