28 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the causes, by skilful agricultural chemists, it was found that, 

 by analysis of the land, nearly all the phosphate had been 

 exhausted; and, following the lead of science, they supplied 

 the deficiency by a liberal use of bone-dust, and the cheese 

 and butter production of former years was fully restored in 

 that section. And the practical farmers of that section are 

 now convinced that there may be substitutes for barn-yard 

 manure. 



A few years after the promulgation of a discovery or inven- 

 tion in the arts or manufactures, it comes into general use, 

 unless practical defect beyond remedy is developed. Farmers, 

 however, are slow and not always sure in their adoption of 

 new appliances of economy or convenience. 



In the year 1608, William Piatt, an English farmer of the pro- 

 gressive kind, published a work descriptive of his successful 

 use of artificial fertilizers in the production of wheat by the 

 use of horn-shavings and bones, and his profitable use of 

 soap-suds and ashes for garden products. Great indignation 

 was expressed against his theories (and his experiments were 

 disregarded), as setting forth strange doctrines, tending to 

 unsettle the more orthodox agricultural doctrines of barn-yard 

 manure as the only fertilizer ; and we find that it took over 

 two hundred years to eradicate this prejudice sufficiently to 

 induce English formers to use the artificial manures which 

 now produce the larger part of their crops. The European agri- 

 culturists are at this time almost wholly indebted to imported 

 artificial fertilizers for the production of their forms. The 

 island of Ichaboo, on the coast of Africa, had exported, in 

 1844, for European consumption a bed of guano 1,100 feet 

 long, 400 feet broad and 30 feet deep ; and almost the 

 chief support of the Peruvian government is the sale of the 

 enormous quantity of guano which fleets of ships annually 

 transport to Europe and America for fertilizing the land, much 

 of which has been thus rescued from sterility by this fortunate 

 discovery. The whole cotton-crop of the South, and most of 

 of the other Southern products of the soil, are fertilized with 

 artificial manure, guano, phosphate of lime, bone-dust, and 

 such mixtures of fertilizing ingredients as our agricultural 

 chemists find necessary to supply exhausted lands or to stim- 

 ulate dormant qualities in new land. 



