lOG 



Manures'. 



YoL. XIL 



in that part of the country, that he would 

 give any one £2 an acre to send a flock of 

 sheep to feed off his turnips. It struck me 

 that this was too nl^uch ; and I said to him, 

 "Do you expect to derive anything from 

 their feeding on the turnips!" He said, 

 "Certainly." I rejoined, "In my opinion 

 the sheep can give you nothing but what 

 the turnips contain; the turnips will only 

 pass through the bodies of the sheep. Do 

 you not think that £2 spent for guano, with 

 the turnips ploughed in, would give you 

 more manure than £2 paid to feed offsheepl" 

 I had a strong argument to maintain in the 

 presence of a great number of gentlemen. 

 The gentleman, of whom I have spoken, 

 said, "If you will come to me to-morrow 

 morning, at my farm, I will convince you." 

 I replied, "I will be with you." I went 

 over the farm in six hours; and that day I 

 gained two converts, the gentleman and his 

 eon ; and I believe they are now two of the 

 first agriculturists in the neighbourhood. I 

 had time to explain my views to them, and 

 they soon saw that if you could get the tur- 

 nips to rot in the ground, and were then to 

 apply j£2. worth of guano, you would get 

 very much more than you could obtain by 

 feeding off a certain number of sheep merely 

 on the turnips. Well, then, I say that under 

 certain circumstances it may be profitable to 

 you, instead of feeding sheep, to use a cer- 

 tain amount of guano and other matters 

 which may be put on the land, or to plough 

 in your crops. It is a money question en- 

 tirely; if we can obtain what we want for a 

 pound less in one way than in another, it is 

 necessary, in a commercial point of view, to 

 get that which will cost the least. I do not 

 call upon you to go and try a whole farm full 

 of experiments of this kmd; but the next 

 time you are placed in the position which I 

 have described, try an acre or two; and if 

 you find, subsequently, that the crops are as 

 good or better, you will have lost nothing by 

 the experiment, and you will be enabled 

 from your own experience, when placed in 

 Bimilar circumstances again, to do without 

 the advice of a chemist. You see, in fact, 

 with reference to the oil-cake, that the farm- 

 er imports the produce of one farm to put on 

 another. Now there is another valuable 

 manure which is well known, though it has 

 only been recently imported. This manure, 

 like all other manures, is derived from the 

 vegetable world. Our rivers arc pouring 

 down, year by year, from the surface of the 

 land, bone dust and potash and soda and am- 

 monia, and a thousand things besides, into 

 the ocean. All the soluble mat'ers of the 

 earth's surface are poured down by the 

 rivers and rivulets into the sea; not, gentle- 



men, to exist there for no purpose at all. As 

 large and extended a vegetable kingdom ex- 

 ists under the surface of the waters as above 

 them, and the source of animal life in the 

 sea is the same as that which sustains it <sn 

 land. The fishes feed and browse on the 

 sea-weed, as we call it, and on oilier plants 

 belonging to the vegetable kingdom in the 

 ocean. The carnivora of the fish kind feed 

 on these fishes, as the fish feed on vegeta- 

 bles; and the birds of the air, having fed on 

 fishes fed on the vegetable kingdom of the 

 sea, deposit their food in places towhieh they 

 resort. Now, the excrements of these birds 

 — the birds themselves having fed on fish, 

 which contain large quantities of every ele- 

 ment of manure — must afford valuable in- 

 gredients. We have immense quantities of 

 these excrements annually deposited all' 

 rourvd our own islands, and wherever it can 

 be collected, it is a most valuable manure; 

 but in this country the rain falls in such 

 abundance as to wash away, in the winter, 

 nearly all that is deposited by these sea birds 

 in the dry weather. There are localities in 

 the earth, however, where the rain falls so 

 seldom, or in such small quantities, that it 

 acts scarcely at all upon these excrements^ 

 and they go on accumulating till they grow 

 up to many feet in thickness, particularly irt 

 those islands which are scarcely ever visited 

 by man, whither the birds resort in immense 

 numbers. Well, now, the excrements of 

 these birds being thus collected in a dry lat- 

 itude, and consolidated for many years, untii 

 they almost have the appearance of a rock, 

 contain almott every essential ingredient for 

 the farm, though not, perhaps, precisely ii* 

 the proper quantities. They contain large 

 quantities of ammonia. Ichaboe guano con- 

 tains from eight to ten percent.; Peruvian 

 guano, ten, twelve, fourteen, and even six- 

 teen per cent.; it contains, besides, phospho- 

 ric acid, lime, magnesia, potash, soda — the 

 two latter in the same quantities, not more 

 than two and a half, or at the greatest, four 

 per cent. Now, as a stimulating manure, 

 guano is a very good thing to apply to land. 

 In all cases where land is heavy, and not apt 

 to germinate as it ought to do, an applica- 

 tion of guano will stimulate it to a very con- 

 siderable extent, and cause the plant to ger- 

 minate and rise quickly. But if you do not 

 supply the plants with that of which the 

 guano is deficient, for their increased growth, 

 it will, in the long run, do more harm than 

 good. The guano contains the chief acting 

 part of ammonia and bone dust; but if you 

 do not supply the others, and if the land is 

 not capable of supplying them, you u ay ob- 

 tain a bad result from the application of 

 suano. It is a well known fact that the 



