284 State Boakd ok AcxKICUltuke, &c. 



And wliat they arc doing for arable land tlicy seem capa- 

 ble of doing for soils hitherto given np to barrenness and 

 desolation. Prof. S. W. Johnson states : 



" About the middle of last century, a liglithouse, known 

 as tlie Dunston Pillar, was built on Lincoln Heath, in Lin- 

 colnshire, England. It was erected to guide travelers over 

 a trackless, barren waste, a very desert, almost in the heart 

 of England; and. long it served its useful purpose. The pil- 

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

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

 cultivation. For twenty-five years no barren heath has been 

 visible, even from its top. Superphosphate of lime, a cJiem- 

 ical invention, 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 tlirough which this 

 great change was effected." Superphosphate over great 

 stretches of English soil makes, or once made, the turnip 

 cix)p. 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 compo- 

 eition of the guano of Peru. That very year a few (;ask8 

 were imported into England as an experiment. The next 

 year 2,000 tons were brought, and in sixteen years its aggre- 

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

 Now Britain, Germany, France and our sea-board States 

 cannot get enough of it. 



With such results it is not a matter of wonder that these 

 commercial fertilizers are winning their way into all our 

 older States where a wasteful agriculture has impoverished 



