FISHERIES AND GUANO INDUSTRY OF PERU. 357 
that apparent deposits of seal guano which have given a high analysis owe 
their chemical value in large measure to bird guano which has been formed 
with it. 
THE PROBLEM. 
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the guano problem to 
Peru. It is not merely that the country is threatened with the loss of an 
exportation industry which has yielded important revenues; the sugar and cotton 
planters of the country have been coming more and more to recognize the value 
of the fertilizer for the production of their crops. In fact, with the relatively 
crude methods and the inefficient labor, combined with the necessary expense 
of irrigation, the profit from these crops is, to a considerable extent, dependent 
upon the availability of a cheap fertilizer. Even at this time the nation’s 
agriculturists are estimated to require 40,000 tons annually, while, under 
existing conditions, they have been able to secure only about two-thirds of 
this amount. The guano deposits have been so mortgaged for the payment of 
the bonded debt that, under the present arrangements, the largest part of 
the guano must be exported. Thus, in 1907, of approximately 124,000 tons 
of guano extracted, only 26,000 tons were taken for the agriculture of Peru. 
Under a continuance of the present conditions, it is certain that even this 
proportion of the nation’s requirement can not be obtained for more than a 
few years longer. 
The exhaustion of the old deposits will soon be realized. It is true that 
there have been ‘false alarms” in the past in this regard. Islands which 
have been proclaimed exhausted have been revisited and have afforded new 
supplies of the fertilizer. This has been due only ina relatively small degree 
to the continued deposition of the birds; in part it is explained by the occasional 
discovery of new deposits of buried guano; but that the same island has been 
successively exhausted two or more times is chiefly accounted for by the fact 
that the term ‘‘exhaustion’’ has been used in a relative sense. At one time 
it was not profitable to extract guano lower than a certain grade, while at a 
later time the market would be content with a fertilizer of much lower nitrogen 
value. It would become profitable, then, to return to ‘‘exhausted”’ islands 
where the lower grades had remained. 
At present the old guano supplies are reduced to the very lowest grades 
that it would be profitable to extract and transport to foreign markets, and 
the approximate amount of such guano being known, it is estimated that at the 
present rate of exportation all the available guano of old formation will be 
removed within four or five years. It is not probable that new deposits will 
be found of sufficient quantity to change the present outlook materially. 
