PERUVIAN, GUANO. 49 



in 1845, the English trade alone requiring in that year no less 

 than 679 vessels. In less than sixteen years from 1840, the 

 quantity taken from the Chineha Islands alone, reached the 

 enormous figure of 2,000,000 tons, and the sales in that 

 time amounted to over $100,000,000. Nor were we much 

 behind England in the extent of our importations of this 

 precious fertilizer. In the ten years previous to 1860, we 

 imported and used very nearly 1,000,000 tons, and in the 

 ten years following, when the South was cut off from its use, 

 we paid about $6,000,000 for guano. 



But such enormous exportations could not last indefinitely. 

 Extensive as those valuable deposits were, they were not 

 inexhaustible. It became evident, some years since, that the 

 enterprising farmer in this and other countries would soon be 

 compelled to seek elsewhere for the means of keeping up and 

 increasing the productiveness of his soil. Scientific and 

 practical men looked forward with a feeling of anxiety, 

 almost of alarm, to the time when the supplies of guano 

 should cease, and this source of dependence be cut off. Then 

 came the wonderful discovery of the value of the immense 

 phosphate beds of the Charleston basin, and opened to us the 

 prospect of a vast mine of commercial and agricultural 

 wealth, the extent and importance of which' we can hardly 

 realize. 



The geological position of these phosphatic strata had long 

 been known to scientific men, and the presence of the rocks 

 appears to have been a source of trouble to planters in some 

 localities from the first attempts at cultivation, cropping out 

 here and there upon the surface in the form of nodules, or 

 " rocks," varying in size from that of a hen's egg to that of a 

 man's head. When the stratum approached the surface it 

 impeded the plough in the processes of cultivation, and the 

 nodules were not unfrequently picked up and carted off to get 

 them out of the way, just as we dispose of the loose rocks on 

 our hillsides, without the slightest idea of their value. I am 

 not aware that any accurate analysis had been made to ascer- 

 tain their chemical composition till 1867, though Prof. C. U. 

 Shepard, of the South Carolina Medical College at Charleston, 

 appears to have known something of their value as early as 

 1860, for in that year he made arrangements to manipulate these 

 7 



