AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS, 261 



England; and long it served its useful purpose. The pillar, 

 no longer a lighthouse, now stands in the midst of a fertile 

 and rich farming region, where all the land is in high cultiva- 

 tion. For twenty-five years no barren heath has been visible, 

 even from its top. Superphosphate of lime, a chemical inven- 

 tion, first applied to land by the British chemist Murray, and 

 brought to the notice of reading farmers by Baron Liebig, 

 has been the chief means through which this great change 

 was effected. Superphosphate over great stretches of Eng- 

 lish soil makes, or once made, the turnip crop. Turnips there 

 support sheep, and with sheep the English farmer knows how 

 to get rich on the poorest light lands. 



Liebig, in 1840, called attention to the chemical composi- 

 tion of the guano of Peru. That very year a few casks were 

 imported into England as an experiment. The next year 

 2,000 tons were brought, and in sixteen years its aggregated 

 sales in Great Britain amounted to $100,000,000. Now 

 Britain, Germany, France, and our seaboard States cannot 

 get enough of it. 



Our State of Georgia is oificially estimated to expend 

 $10,000,000 annually in the purchase of fertilizers, and single 

 towns in this State lay out thirty to fifty thousand dollars 

 for guano, phosphates, etc., besides using large quantities of 

 home supplies. 



Chemistry has taught agriculture how to utilize the refuse 

 of slaughter houses, and fisheries ; the bones, the flesh, the 

 blood, which but a few years ago were a waste, a nuisance, 

 and a peril to the public health. It has found vast mines of 

 fossil phosphates in England, Canada, Norway, Spain, France, 

 Germany, South Carolina, Russia, and, but a few weeks ago, 

 in Austria : and has shown how they may be quickly and 

 profitably converted into a precious fertilizer. 



Chemistry, by discovering and accurately defining the food 

 elements of vegetable growth, and by revealing their sources 

 and realizing the means of making them cheaply available to 

 the farmer, has triumph antl}' overcome one of the previously 

 insuperable obstacles to the development of national wealth. 



