278 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



It has been questioned whether its effects will be permanent. 

 I can only answer, that I have seen its obviously beneficial 

 effects three years after its application upon grass. How much 

 longer its efficacy may be expected to continue, experience only 

 can determine. 



Several kinds of guano have been brought into Great Britain ; 

 bat the great distinction is between that from the Island of 

 Ichaboe, on the coast of Africa, and that from the islands in the 

 Pacific. The former seems entirely deficient in uric acid, and 

 consequently lacks what is deemed a valuable element in vege 

 tation. The comparative value of the two in public estimation, 

 and in the opinion of a distinguished chemist, is supposed to be 

 as four to five. The supply from Ichaboe is said to be ex 

 hausted, the enormous quantity of five to six hundred thousand 

 tons having been taken, as is stated, from that single island. 



I should do wrong to say that guano is always successful. 

 There were many complaints this year of its failure, attributed 

 to the excessive droughts which prevailed at the beginning of 

 the season. A farmer likewise, in Cambridgeshire, communi 

 cates to the Royal Agricultural Society, in their last journal, his 

 failure in two successive applications of it to crops of barley. In 

 neither instance does any advantage appear to have been gained. 

 He attributes this to something in the nature or character of the 

 soil ; but this, without further trials, must be set down as wholly 

 conjectural. 



It is quite proper, likewise, that I should urge upon the farm 

 ers of the United States, that, however auspicious and brilliant 

 may be the promises which guano holds out to them, they must 

 not overlook the resources for enriching their own lands within 

 their own reach. The following statement will strengthen this 

 advice. 



Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., than whom, I believe, wherever his 

 character for intelligent, accurate, and philosophical observation 

 is known, it will be universally admitted, there is no higher 

 agricultural authority in England, informed me that, the last 

 season, he carted to the headlands of one of his fields a quantity 

 of loam, mixed with coal-ashes and rubbish, and, having formed 

 it into a bed, heaped upon it a quantity of bam manure, from 

 the drippings of which the loam, &c., became completely satu 

 rated. Upon the application of this to the land for a crop of 



