THEORIES CONCERNING SOIL FERTILITY 325 



Aikman states that at the present time about 100,000 tons of 

 bones are used annually on English soils, and that bone ash is 

 still imported from South America. The East Indians complain 

 that England has robbed India of bones. 



The importation of mineral phosphates into England exceeded 

 250,000 tons in 1885, when more than a dozen countries were being 

 drawn upon for this material, representing three continents and 

 Australia; and as early as 1892 the United States was furnishing 

 Great Britain more than 200,000 tons of phosphate a year. 



Besides this, England has her own phosphate deposits in the form 

 of coprolites or phosphatic nodules, which, according to Aikman, 

 " have been found in great abundance in the greensand formation, 

 in the crag of the eastern counties, and in the chalk formations of 

 the southern counties." He adds: 



"They are found in large quantities in Cambridgeshire. . . . They were also 

 found in enormous quantities in Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, and Essex, 

 and were for a long time largely used in the manufacture of superphosphate 

 (acid phosphate), but of late years have not been used to anything like the same 

 extent, owing to the fact that there are richer and cheaper sources of phosphate 

 of lime available." 



In addition to all this, England produces and supplies. to her 

 soils large quantities of slag phosphate, the amount of which ex- 

 ceeded 100,000 tons a year before the close of the last century, 

 and her annual production has since risen to 300,000 tons per 

 annum. 



France, Germany, and other small European countries are not 

 far behind England in the matter of increasing the fertility of their 

 soils. By 1890 France was using about 400,000 tons of phosphate 

 annually, and this was supplemented by slag phosphate, the amount 

 of which exceeded 200,000 tons in 1899, while Germany applied 

 800,000 tons of slag phosphate to her soils the same year. The 

 application of phosphates to the soils of Europe has largely in- 

 creased during the years of the present century. Thus, in 1907, 

 Italy, with a total area of less than 115,000 square miles (about 

 twice as large as Illinois), used 950,000 metric tons of phosphate 

 (also 82,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer, and 7000 tons of potassium 

 salts; and during the five years, 1904 to 1908, more than i^ 

 million long tons of Florida phosphate were shipped to Germany. 



