218 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



cattle? The philosopher came to the assistance of the farmer, and rescued him 

 by timely aid from the difficulties which beset him. Nitrate of sodi and guano 

 •were imported, super-phosphate of lime from bones was invented ; and agri- 

 cultural chemistry, having earned the place of a practical, that is, a profitable 

 science, the anomalies in connection with the use of lime, clialk, gypsum, &c., 

 were mastered and explained by the joint exertions of the farmer and his new 

 ally, the chemist. 



Nitrate of soda was imported from Peru and sold in small quantities by an 

 agricultural manure dealer somewhere about 1835, and in the same year a 

 cargo of guano was consigned to a Mr. iMeyers, a Liverpool merchant. Guano 

 (of any agricultural value) is the dung of sea-fowl feeding on fish in a zone 

 whore rain rarely falls. The guano of the Peruvian islands was protected in 

 the time of the Incas by special laws. In 1G09 its properties were fully des- 

 cribed in a work published in Lisbon by Garsilaso de la Vega, but this precious 

 fertilizer was neglected in Europe until the date of Mr. Meyers' importation, 

 when investigations into the chemisty of agriculture commenced by Sir Hum- 

 phrey Davy with very little practical effect during his lifetime, and Ciirried on 

 by the continental plnlosophers, were beginning to bear fruit. Guano, al- 

 though incredulously received by farmers in 183G, was eagerly accepted by the 

 dealers in artificial manures, and sold either in a pure state, or under a special 

 name, mixed with less active ingredients. In 1843, a store inferior to that of 

 Peru having been discovered on the Ichiboe Islands, on the coast of Africa, 

 1100 feet long, 400 broad, and on an average 35 feet deep, the whole wa? re- 

 moved before the close of 1844, and realized upwards of a million sterling. 

 Three years previously, an article of forty-three pages, from the German of 

 Dr. Charles Sprengel, appeared in the first volume of the "Journal of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society," in which, though every kind of animal manure 

 was described, guano only received a passing mention as a curiosity, and no 

 note to supply the deficiency, was attached by the editor ; so little was it then 

 known to the most intelligent cultivators, and so speedily had the knowledge 

 of its value spread in the interval. This single fact would alone show that 

 we had reached a new era in the history of farming. 



In 1840. before the farming public had become accustomed to these imported 

 manures. Professor Liebig suggested that the fertilizing power of bone manure 

 would be increased by the application of sulphuric acid, and the consequent 

 production of superphosphate of lime. There have been periods in our his- 

 tory when a book like that of Liebig would never have traveled further than 

 the libraries of our men of science ; but in li^40 we had in our dealers in 

 manures a commercial class keenly alLve to the possible profits of a philosoph- 

 ical sufrgestion. A carboy of sulphuric acid was easily poured over a few 

 bushels of ground bones, and soon Suffolk drills, charored with superphosphate 

 and guano, were sent to teach farmers that if they wished to grow great root- 

 crops, there was something to be added to the invaluable " muck." 



One of the first to experiment upon the new manure, and then to manufac- 

 ture it on a large scale, was Mr. J. B. Lawes, a Hertfordshire squire and 

 scientific cliemist. He was followed by Mr Purser, of London, who began 

 in 1843 with a single carboy of sulphuric acid, price 10s., and has since fre- 

 quently purchased ten thousand carboys at one time. At Southampton, a few 

 years later, Messrs. Dixon and Cardusmade an excellent speculation by a con- 

 tract with the Government of Buenos Ayresfor the exclusive right of exporting 

 the charred flefeh and ashes of joints of meat burned for want of other fuel on 

 the treeless Pampas, to boil down the tallow. The animal refuse, the accu- 

 mulation of a quarter of a century, when treated with sulphuric acid, is con- 

 verted into valuable superpliosphate. But although every quarter of the 

 globe, even battlefields, were ransacked for bones, the supply was insufficient, 

 and some new resource was required in order to keep down the price. 



The chemists having so far done their part, the next contribution to the 

 progress of agriculture came from the geologists. Professor llenslow, whose 



