BoletiÌn mercantil de Puerto Rico. (San Juan, P.R.) 18??-1918, 1902-10-29


if it were necessary to buy commercial
fertilizers, and the home price would
be vastly increased. We are now
drawing al the time upon Natures &C
cumulations of the past.
There are three important mineral
fertilizing elements. The first of these
is potash. 1t is generally found in the
soil. but there is only one place in the
world that has been discovered where
you can dig it up, and that is in Ger
many. Another of the important fer
tilizing elements, phosphoric acid, is
found much more plentifully. Large
deposits have been discovered in Flo
rida, and more recently in Kentucky;
these beds are the grave-yards Of mar
inc creatures of previous period. The
third important fertilizer may be called
mineral, because it is found in the soil,
although it comes from the atmosphere,
and that is the ritrogenous element.
These three things are taken up out of
the soil very rapidly by wheat or other
exhausting crops. Flax is very severe
on the soil, and so is tobacco, or any
other broad-leafed crop.
System of agriculture pursued in
the older sections of the Northwest
keep up resorting to commercial fertil-
ity of the soil pretty well without re-
sorting to commercial fertilizers. These
farmers sell the results of skill. They
sell butter, for example, which, so far
as the land is concerned, is the sale OF
little more than the wind and water OF
the atmosphere of that farm. When
they sell beet-sugar they sell only the
wind and water. If they sell fat pork
they sell very little that exhausts the
soil. In beef and mutton, to be sure,
they sell something that exhausts the
soil, but indefinitely less than the
grains, because so large percentage Of
what the animals eat goes directly back
to the land in fertilizing elements.
Rotating crops help the land by dis
tributing the demands upon it.
Selling Inherited Wealth.
ut would be better if we never had
exported bushel of grain. We are
selling just so much of the couptry's
wealth inherited from the long past
whenever we ship our cereals across
the ocean. The situation is precisely
the same as with England's export OF
coal. Upon that article much of her
industrial supremacy depends, and yet
for years she has been sending it away.
European lands show in their exhaus-
ton what we will untimely come to
here. Many of the best farms in Eu-
rope retain their fertility only by scour-
ing the globe for fertilizers. The battle
fields of Europe have been dug up for
bones. The last buffalo, deer, and elk
bone that could be gathered up, has
been shipped there.
"The1e is, of course, some soil for
nation through the disintegration of the
rocks by froSts; the treets, where the
leaves are permitted to rot on the
ground, bring soil elements from great
depth, and SO act as nourishing force.
For that reason we have established a
Bureau of Forestry, and are doing all
we can for the encouragement Of tree
growing.
"The sewage system of our cities is
undoubtedly great waste of organic
matter which should go to tho soil, but
at present it is not economically feasible
to do anything else in this new conuntry.
In Edinburgh, which stands on hill, |
the sewage is turned into a valley, |
which is made so rich that its grass
can be cut oftener than once a month
through most of the year. In some
parts Of England they pump the sew
age on to sandy land, and thereby grow
very large crops. But we have hardly
reached the stage where this can pro-
fitably be done here"