SECRETARY'S REPORT Q'J 



countries. Soroo have even been exported thither from the United 

 States. The declared value of the bones imported into Great Britain 

 (according to their statistics) from 1837 to 1841, was one million 

 two hundred and seventy-one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two 

 pounds sterling, or about six millions of dollars; and from 1841 to 

 1847, there were imported into one port alone (Hull) an annual 

 average of upwards of twenty thousand tons. A late English writer 

 says : 



"Amongst the many improvements in agriculture which modern practice 

 has adopted, there is none of higher importance than the introduction of 

 bones as a field manure. It is quite possible that many who have looked with 

 admiration on the achievements of industry in every branch, and have marked 

 with satisfaction the immense increase in the production of human food which 

 has taken place during the last fifty years — an increase which has been trebled 

 in the space of time that population has doubled, and who have noted the 

 augmented value of property ,^the improved condition of the laborer, and the 

 extended field for enterprise, skill and capital, which the occupation of the 

 farmer now affords, will overlook the fact that the use of bone manure has 

 been one chief mean by which all tliis has been accomplished. But the fact 

 is so ; the adoption of bones as a farm fertilizer has opened sources of produc- 

 tion that have been the means of providing, to a mighty extent, food, labor 

 and wealth for the community. What draining has done for the wet and cold 

 soils, bone culture, by j^romoting the system of root husbandry at a period 

 when every other means had been found incompetent and useless, has done for 

 the rest." 



The use of bone-dust in some parts of the continent of Europe 

 has greatly increased within the last twenty years. Formerly large 

 quantities were exported to England from the German states. Now, 

 Stockhardt writes, (or rather he so wrote in 1851,) 



" That bones exert a vigorous manuring influence upon our soil can no longer 

 be doubted, for the results of practical experiment are now before us to a 

 suflBcient extent to convince every one who is open to conviction. Manuring 

 with bone-dust has become general over all parts of Saxony during the last 

 fifteen or twenty years. How important an extension of this mode of fertil- 

 izing land has obtained in this part of Saxony more particularly, is revealed 

 to us by the fact that the first bone-mill, constructed by an intelligent farmer, 

 ground a total of six hundred weight during the year 1S37, but in 1848 some 

 fifteen thousand hundred weight ; as also by the additional consideration that 

 in the last mentioned year, in this Province alone some fift^i thousand or sixty 

 thousand hundred weight were prepared and sold, yet without satisfying all 

 demands. The total quantity of bones which are to be obtained from the 



