316 Notice of Guano from the Yorkshire Coast, 



nure, and deserving of being collected. And, recurring to a 

 preceding remark, I would lay the more stress on the value of 

 manure of this kind, deprived of the greater part of its salts, 

 and especially of its ammoniacal salts, by the action of rain, 

 the earthy phosphates remaining, which vv^ater is incapable of 

 dissolving, — seeing that a notion, far from correct, is common- 

 ly entertained, that guano, after exposure to rain, is rendered 

 useless. Thus, in a letter from Ichaboe, recently published in 

 the Leeds Mercury, descriptive of that remarkable islet, the 

 writer of it (Mr J. Lees), after expressing his apprehension 

 that the great deposits of guano will soon be exhausted, and 

 that no new ones will be discovered, as he supposes that they 

 must be limited to rainless climates, adds — " That many thou- 

 sands of tons of guano, after having been taken in [shipped], 

 were cast away, when it was discovered that the rains had 

 caused its fermentation, and destroyed its properties." This is 

 an opinion not less erroneous than one lately announced at a 

 great agricultural meeting, that the effect of guano, as a ma- 

 nure, must be fugitive — depending on its volatile ammoniacal 

 ingredients, — overlooking the non-volatile ammoniacal salts 

 which it contains in large proportions, as well as the insoluble 

 phosphates. 



Considering, as has been already observed, these phosphates 

 as not the least important of the ingredients of guano, the ex- 

 crements of birds, wherever they have been accumulated, whe- 

 ther abounding in nitrogenous compounds, as in dry climates, 

 or in the insoluble phosphates, as in rainy climates, must be 

 valuable to the agriculturist, and are likely to repay the enter- 

 prising merchant who may import them. In the arctic and 

 antarctic regions of the ocean, and those bordering on them, 

 as birds, feeding on fish, there abound, it is probable tliat great 

 stores of guano of the latter kind are laid up in accessible 

 situations, and which may furnish cargoes to our whalers, and 

 partly remunerate them when unsuccessful in their fishing en- 

 terprise. And, nearer home, as in Iceland, the Feroe Islands, 

 and St Kilda, it is likely much useful guano might be collected, 

 were the inhabitants who depend chiefly for their support on 

 the feathered race to collect the excrement at the same time 

 that they take the birds or their eggs. 



The same view may be even farther extended. As the ex- 



