five volumes before I'd get to the P's. But, joking aside, I don't
get much out of that definition except that phosphoric acid is a
sour liquid and is used in medicine."

"The definition is entirely correct," said Percy "Any text on
chemistry will give you a very similar definition, and your
physician and druggist will give you the same information."

"Well, I know the fertilizer agents claim to sell phosphoric acid in
two-hundred-pound bags which wouldn't hold any kind of liquid."

"True," replied Percy, "and I consider it a shame that the farm boy
who goes to the high school or college and is there taught exactly
what phosphoric acid is, must. when he returns to the farm, try to
read bulletins from his agricultural experiment station in which the
term 'phosphoric acid' is used for what it is not. At the state
agricultural college, the professor of chemistry correctly teaches
the farm boy that phosphoric acid is a liquid compound containing
three atoms of hydrogen, one of phosphorus, and four of oxygen in
the molecule; and then the same professor, as an experiment station
investigator, goes to the farmers' institutes and incorrectly
teaches the same boy's father that phosphoric acid is a solid
compound pound containing two atoms of phosphorus and five atoms of
oxygen in the molecule."

"But why do they continue to teach such confusion?"

"Well, Sir, if they know, they never tell. In some manner this
misuse of the name was begun, and every year doubles the difficulty
of stopping it."