1864.] CHEMIRTRY OF MANURES. 107 



French or British, is proportionally diminished, and commerce 

 suffers j^ro tanto. The gain to France and England is, therefore, 

 but illusory, if either robs a neighbor's soil to fertilize her own. 



In a work just published,* Baron Liebig sternly rebukes Eng- 

 land for her over-eagerness to buy up, in the form of bones, the 

 phosphatic wealth of countries less advanced than herself in finan- 

 cial and industrial power ; and for the apparent recklessness with 

 which she squanders forth these treasures (ill-gotten and ill-spent), 

 down her innumerable sewers to the sea. The great agricultural 

 teacher manifests alarm at the superabundant zeal with which the 

 most diligent of his pupils obeys his lessons; and to other nations 

 he earnestly points out the ruinous consequences that must ensue 

 to them from the exportation of phosphates, drawn from their soil, 

 to stay the exhaustion of the English fields. His cry of warning 

 is crou^ihed in terms of almost passionate invective : — 



England (he exclaims) is robbing all other countries of the con- 

 ditions of their fertility. Already, in her eagerness for bones, she 

 has turned up the battle-fields of Leipsic, of Waterloo, and of the 

 Crimea ; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has carried 

 away the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she 

 removes from the shores of other countries to her own, the manu- 

 rial equivalent of three millions and a half of men ; whom she 

 takes from us the means of supporting, and squanders down her 

 sewers to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs upon the neck of 

 Europe, nay of the entire world, and sucks the heart-blood from 

 nations, without a thought of justice towards them, without a 

 shadow of lasting advantage for herself. 



It is impossible (he proceeds to say) that such iniquitous inter- 

 ference with the Divine order of the world should escape its right- 

 ful punishment; and this may perhaps overtake England even 

 aooner than the countries she robs. Most assuredly a time awaits 

 her, when all her riches of gold, iron, and coal will be infidequate 

 to buy back a thousandth part of the conditions of life, which for 

 centuric^s she has wantonly squandered away. 



It must be admitted that these strictures, thousrh somewhat 

 harsh in tone, are not without a certain degree of truh. It may, 

 however, be urged, on the other hand, that they apply only to one 

 branch, among many, of British manurial industry, — and even to 



. * "Einletung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaues." Von Justus von 

 Liebig. Braunschweig, Vieweg und Sohn, 1863. 



