IV.] BONES 107 



ably tried and appreciated by numbers of people in 

 all ages and countries; they are mentioned by Blithe 

 in 1653, Evelyn in 1674, and Worlidge in 1668, and by 

 the close of the eighteenth century their use was 

 becoming common in the neighbourhood of all the 

 great towns. Arthur Young mentions the use of the 

 waste from the making of knife-handles near Sheffield, 

 and again enumerates bones as one of the substances 

 the Hertfordshire farmers were in the habit of bringing 

 back from London when their carts had been delivering 

 hay or grain, A Mr St Leger writes to Dr Hunter 

 of York (edition of Evelyn's Terra published in 1778): 

 " I also dressed an acre of grass ground with bones in 

 October 1774, and rolled them in. The succeeding 

 crop of hay was an exceeding good one. However, I 

 have found from repeated experience that upon grass 

 ground this kind of manure exerts itself more power- 

 fully the second year than the first. It must be obvious 

 to every person, that the bones should be well broken 

 before they can be equally spread upon the land. No 

 pieces should exceed the size of marbles ... At 

 Sheffield it has now become a trade to grind bones for 

 the use of the farmer." 



It was in the early years of the nineteenth century, 

 however, that the demand began to grow ; and it received 

 a considerable impetus from the introduction, probably 

 first of all in Yorkshire, of machines for reducing the 

 bone into half- or quarter-inch fragments, or even into 

 powder. By 181 5 the home supply was proving insuffi- 

 cient, and bones began to be imported from the Continent 

 in rapidly increasing quantities until nearly 30,000 tons 

 per annum were brought in, chiefly from Europe — a 

 demand which is said to have resulted in the ransacking 

 of many of the battlefields. In this connection a 

 characteristic outburst of Liebig's has often been 



