354 PEACTICAL GARDENING. 



whom were Sir Joseph Banks, and the late Lord Sheffield, in 

 1810. Sir Joseph Hstened with attention, as the conversation 

 at the time seemed to call back to his memory circumstances 

 connected Avith the use of guano, respecting which he no 

 doubt obtained his first notions while visiting the Pacific with 

 Captain Cook." Mr. Walton also describes a process of 

 manuring, by means of which he himself raised to high per- 

 fection a plantation of many thousand coffee-trees, while 

 residincf in the Island of St. Domingo. The material was the 

 dimg of parrots, — "the accumulated masses of hundreds of 

 generations of those birds which congregated, at a certain spot, 

 in countless numbers, and had never before been molested." 

 The reader is referred to the original article. 



The highly fertilizing quahties of manure so obtained, in 

 common with that of pigeons, doves, and even common 

 poultry, depend, in a great degree, upon the circumstance 

 that urinous secretions of birds are combined with the faeces 

 of the bowels ; but, although the excreta of land-birds thus 

 generally surpass the fseces of animals, they cannot compete 

 with those of sea-fowl, which feed upon fish, and are thus 

 peculiarly rich in ammoniacal and earthy phosphates. 



Walton cites a variety of authors, ancient and modern, who 

 afi'ord evidence of the surprising prolificity that results from 

 the proper application of guano. One of these, Dr. Hipohto 

 Unanuer, a Peruvian, pubhshed " Observations on the Climate 

 of Peru," in 1806. Humboldt has been already mentioned ', 

 but the highest authority on any subject connected with Peru, 

 is that of the distinguished naturahst, M. Alcides D'Orbigny, 

 who, in 1826, was sent, by the Directors of the Paris Museum, 

 to explore the upper division and western coast of South 

 America, where he remained till 1833. From consentient 

 evidence, it is beyond doubt proved that "true" guano is a 

 vast accumulation of the faecal matter from sea-birds ; and 

 these birds, according to M. D'Orbigny, consist chiefly of the 

 gull, gannet, pehcan, cormorant, and phseten families, in flocks 

 so vast " that, at certaia seasons, their various tribes actually 

 darken the air as they move along. All these marine birds, 

 in consequence of their invariably reposing in large societies 

 on the same points, and there passing the night, unceasingly 

 augment the strata of guano ; and as it does not rain in that 

 part of the country, the surface is never washed by those 

 heavy showers to which we are accustomed in Europe ; these 



