INTRODUCTION 



INSOLUBLE phosphates have been applied to the land in the form of 

 bones for a very long time, and until the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century it was generally assumed that they owed their value to the 

 oil which they contained. Lord Dundonald in his Treatise on the 

 Connection of Agriculture with Chemistry, published in 1795, seems 

 to have been one of the first investigators to realise that the fertilising 

 value of bones was due to the phosphoric acid which they contained. 

 Kirkman writing in 1796 came to the same conclusion, and so did 

 de Saussure in 1804. These opinions were accepted and repeated by 

 Liebig, who was perhaps largely responsible for the widespread dis- 

 semination of this important piece of information. Dundonald in his 

 Treatise goes a good deal further than the other investigators, in as 

 much as speaking of the phosphate of lime in bones he records: 

 "It is a saline compound, very insoluble. There is reason to believe 

 a very considerable proportion of this nearly insoluble salt is contained 

 in most fertile soils." It may therefore be said that Dundonald was 

 the first investigator to establish the value of insoluble phosphates. 

 Towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century the use of insoluble phosphates increased with great 

 rapidity throughout Europe, but nowhere more so than in this country. 

 By about 1815 the home supply began to prove insufficient to meet 

 the large demand, and resort was had to importation from Europe. 

 The import of bones grew rapidly, and some idea of the importance 

 then attached to the supply of insoluble phosphates may be gained 

 from Liebig's passionate outburst: 



England is robbing all other countries of their fertility. Already in her eager- 

 ness for bones, she has turned up the battlefields of Leipsic and 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 manurial equivalent of three million 

 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 on the neck 

 of Europe, nay of the whole world, and sucks the heart blood from nations 

 without a thought of justice towards them, without a shadow of lasting 

 advantage to herself ! 



The discovery of large deposits of rock phosphates in Spain, in 

 this country and in other parts of Europe, eased the situation. More- 

 over these discoveries came close on the heels of Lawes's patent for 



R.B.S. I 



