"im 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 156. 



finite. So as these birdes have not only the flesh to 

 serve for meate, their singing for recreation, their 

 feathers for ornament and beautie, but also their dung 

 serves to fatten the ground. The which hath bin so 

 appointed by the soveraigne Creator for the service of 

 man, that he might remember to acknowledge and be 

 loyall to Him from whom all good proceedes." 



Many of your readers will, I doubt not, thank 

 me for appending to this communication an in- 

 teresting historical account of the discovery of the 

 Lobos Islands, and of the use made, at a very early 

 period, of the guano, with which these and other 

 islands of the Peruvian coast abounded. It was 

 drawn up by an intelligent friend of mine, and 

 sent to The Times a few weeks back ; but your 

 columns appear to me to be a more appropriate 

 receptacle for it. He writes as follows : 



" The extraordinary suggestion advanced by the 

 American secretary, Mr. Webster, that the Lobos 

 Islands may have been discovered by an American 

 citizen in the year ] 823, lias been answered by two or 

 three of your correspondents, but I am not aware that 

 the evidence has been carried back beyond the last 

 century. I beg, therefore, to send you the following 

 extracts from a work well known to geographers 

 (^Historia ^general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las 

 islas y tierra Jirme del Mar Oceano, written by Antonio 

 de Herrera, and printed at Madrid in the years 1601 — 

 1615), from which it will appear not only that the 

 islands were known more than 250 years ago, but that 

 they were used, and used for the very purpose for which 

 their possession is so much coveted at the present day. 

 At p. 60. of the Descripcion de las Indias Occidentales, 

 prefixed to vol. i., the following passage occurs in the 

 account of the district called the Audiencia de los 

 Reyes : — ♦ On the coast of this Audiencia, from the 

 Punta de Aguja, where it joins with the Punta del 

 Quito, in six degrees of southern latitude, there are the 

 following islands, ports and points : Two islands, which 

 are called Islas de Lobos Marinos, in seven degrees, 

 one distant four leagues from the coast, and the other 

 further out to sea." 



This description of their relative position corre- 

 sponds exactly with their present appellation, 

 " Lobos de tierra," " Lobos de afuera." Immediately 

 preceding this passage the following occurs, show- 

 ing that the use of guano as a fertiliser was cer- 

 tainly known nearly 300 years ago : 



♦' Llevan los Indios de las Islas de Lobos Marinos 

 mucho estiercol de aves para sus heredades, con que de 

 esteril hazen la tierra fertil. " 



That is : The Indians take from the Lobos Marinos 

 Islands a great deal of birds' dung for their farms, 

 with which they fertilise the barren land. 



With respect to the discoverer of these islands, 

 and also the name given to them — Lobos Marinos, 

 sea-wolves — the following passage (dec. iii. lib. x. 

 cap. vi.) affords tolerably clear evidence : 



" Francisco Plzarro determined to pursue his dis- 

 covery . . . and they discovered the port of Jangcrara, 



and arrived at a little island composed of large rocks, 

 where they heard fearful noises; but as these valiant 

 Castilians were not daunted by anything they might 

 see, they went in a boat in order to examine it, and 

 found that the noises proceeded from sea- wolves, 'lobos 

 marinos,' of which there are great numbers, and very 

 large, upon this coast." 



In conclusion, I will only add that this edition 

 of Herrera is illustrated with maps, in one of 

 which the Lobos Islands are laid down and de- 

 scribed as " Ylas de Lobos." W. B. Rte. 



British Museum. 



In so common a work as Echard's Gazetteer, 

 printed in 1741, is the following: 



" Lohos, two islands on the coast of Peru, betwixt 

 Lat. 6 and 7. There is another, called Lobos de Peyta, 

 over against the town of that name, on the same coast." 



R. P. 



GDANO AND TERRA BRITANNICA. 



I recently observed a paragraph in your inter- 

 esting publication headed " Guano and the Lobos 

 Islands," under the signature of P. C. S. S. Re- 

 ference was therein made to a scarce work trans- 

 lated from the Spanish in the early part of the 

 seventeenth century, supposed to have been trans- 

 lated by the Earl of Sandwich. Your correspond- 

 ent proceeds to relate that the characteristics of 

 guano are well described in the work alluded to, 

 extracts illustrative of this, and the fact of the 

 Lobos Islands being well known at that period, 

 being furnished by P. C. S. S. These are exceed- 

 ingly interesting, as showing the preposterous 

 character of the American claims as first coun- 

 tenanced by Mr. Webster, under the plea that 

 they had been discovered by a subject of the 

 United States only about twenty years ago. 



My principal object, however, in addressing 

 you, is to notice the remarkable quotation from 

 Cardanus, respecting " Terra Britannica." Pliny 

 in his Natural History describes a substance called 

 Marga (Marl), used in Gaul and Britain, of which 

 he further states that its fertilising effects endure 

 for eighty years, and that it was never known for 

 one man to marl his fields twice during his life- 

 time. The marl here alluded to by Pliny is not 

 the ordinary red marl, for he describes it as con- 

 taining kidney-shaped stones like flints, and the 

 marl was of a dun colour ; I have no doubt but 

 this alludes to the phosphorite strata of the green 

 sand, and is identical with the " Terra Britannica" 

 of Cardanus. Its fertilising and chemical qualities 

 approach those of guano, and it would be singular 

 if it should prove on further inquiry that our 

 phosphoric marls of the green sand were exported 

 under the title of " Terra Britannica." That the 

 phosphoric marl of the green sand was extensively 

 quarried (mined) centuries ago, has been proved 



