Approaching Exhaustion of the Guano Deposits. 361 



excremental manure of all the three Chincha Islands will have 

 been carried off! 



Notwithstanding ample supplies of guano have been dis- 

 covered besides all along the west coast of South America, 

 on uninhabited islands and promontories, and upwards of 

 7,000,000 tons of this valuable commodity been found on 

 the islands south of Callao alone,* yet, even should this 

 statement turn out correct, it would only supply the existing 

 demand for other 10 or 15 years, while the formation of beds 

 of guano must year after year become more and more con- 

 fined to solitary, inaccessible islands of the Southern Ocean. 

 For so soon as such beds of guano begin to be explored, they 

 are quickly abandoned by the birds, which are gradually re- 

 treating from the islands along the coast and the usual chan- 

 nels of commerce. 



The Peruvian Government does not seem to realize the 

 calamity impending over the country on the exhaustion of 

 the guano beds, which would dry up one of its principal 

 sources of revenue. Certainly it seems impossible to make 

 a more unwise use of the immense sums which are flowing 



* Beds of guano have also been discovered lately by Captain Ord at the Kooria- 

 Mooria Islands, on the south coast of Arabia, in 18° N. 56° E., 850 miles E. N. E of 

 Aden. Here any ship can load this valuable cargo on paying a duty of £2 per ton to 

 the English Government, which has recently established a colony at the bay and is- 

 lands of that name, and has made it a coaling station. But the African guano is 

 by no means so strong or so pungent a manure as that found on the rainless coasts of 

 Peru, where certain peculiarities of climate combine to make it less liable to diminu- 

 tion of its saline virtues by dissolution or liquefaction. 



