96 



The JVew Fertilizer — Guano. 



Vol. IX. 



fields liave commenced drying- up, while the 

 potatoes have not half reached their matu- 

 rity. The crop will not be half a yield. 

 Wo learn from a gentleman who has passed 

 through New York, recently, that the same 

 disease seems to be prevalent throughout 

 that State. This is very singular, ancf is a 

 subject of sufficient importance to claim the 

 attention of scientific men, that the causes 

 may be made known, and if possible, the 

 evil remedied another yea.T.—Pittsfield, iMas- 

 sachuseils, Eaffle. 



The Potatoe Crop. — There is no crop 

 of vegetables of so much value and import- 

 ance to all classes, as the potatoe. It is 

 bread, and meat, and drink, and sustenance, 

 to the needy; with potatoes, it is impossible 

 to starve, and thoy are the delight of the 

 rich as well as the poor— there Ts no aris- 

 tocracy about a potatoe. The man of wealth 

 has them served up in various shapes and 

 forms at his table— the boiled mealy potatoe, 

 the fried, the nnshed, the scolloped and the 

 stewed, while the poor thrust them peel and 

 all under the burning embers, and with a 

 little salt make a meal upon them fit for an 

 emperor. How painful therefore, it is to 

 learn that whole crops of this valuable escu- 

 lent have been destroyed by the rot. Farm- 

 ers, scientific cultivators, and chemists, 

 should employ themselves assiduously in 

 discovering the cause. Is it in the soil, 

 m the manure, in the cultivation, in the 

 seed, or in the planting] We hope nothing 

 will be left undone to ascertain the cause 

 and apply the remedy.— Saturday Ameri- 

 can. 



The potatoe crop throug-hout New York, 

 IS stated to be ruined. The Shakers, who 

 engaged to deliver fifteen thousand bushels 

 in that city, have given notice of inability 

 to furnish a single bushel, and will hardly 

 have enough for tlioir community, ofifering 

 to the " world's people" the whole crop, if 

 they would dig it. The only section from 

 which no complaint is heard, is Maine, but 

 It IS hardly possible that even there the crop 

 has escaped the disease.— Saturday Ameri- 

 can. 



The New Fertilizer— Guano. 



The Inverness (Scot.) Courier brings for- 

 ward a statement to make stronger the'' truth 

 of the old saying, that there Is " nothing 

 new under the sun," and with reference to 

 guano as a manure, remarks that it is men- 

 tioned in Robertson's "History of America," 

 speaking of the ancient agriculture of the 

 Peruvians, where the author says, "They 



enriched the soil by manuring it with the 

 dung of sea-fowls, of which they found an 

 inexhaustible store in all the islands scat- 

 tered along their coasts." And in a note 

 he adds, "The Spaniards have adopted those 

 customs of the ancient Peruvians; they con- 

 tinue to use guano, or the dung of sea-fowls, 

 as manure. Uloa gives a description of the 

 almost incredible quantity of it in the small 

 islands near the coast." We had thus the 

 name and use of guano told us by Robertson 

 seventy years ago. 



Guano. — We find the following paragraph 

 in Burke's account of the European settle- 

 ments in America: 



" The district which produces this pepper 

 in such abundance, is small but naturally 

 barren ; its fertility in pepper, as well as in 

 grain and fruits, is owing to the advantages 

 of a species of a very extraordinary manure, 

 brought from an island called Iquiqua. This - 

 is a sort of yellowish earth of a fetid smell. 

 It is generally thought to be the dung of 

 birds, because of the similitude of the scent, 

 feathers having been found very deep in it, 

 and vast numbers of sea fowls appearing 

 upon that and all the adjacent coasts. But 

 on the other hand, whether we look upon 

 this substance as the dung of these sea 

 fowls, or a particular species of earth, it is 

 almost equally difficult to .conceive how the 

 small island of Iquiqua, not above two miles 

 in circumference, could supply such im- 

 mense quantities, and yet after supplying 

 upwards of twelve ship loads annually, for a 

 century together, for the distant parts, and 

 a vastly larger quantity for the use of the 

 neighbcurhood, it cannot be observed that it 

 is in the lea.st diminished, or that the height 

 of the island is at all lessened." 



Peruvian Guano.— All the departments 

 of art and industry have their occasional 

 novelties. The reigning novelty in the ag- 

 ricultural world— that is, in this part of it — 

 is the substance called guano, which the 

 reader will perceive is advertised as on sale 

 in Baltimore. This manure consists of the 

 deposite of sea birds that roost and breed on 

 the islands on the south-west coast of Ame- 

 rica. It has been used for ages in Peru, 

 and is there so indispensable to the growth 

 of corn and wheat, that, according to some 

 writers, the country would have been a bar- 

 ren waste without it. 



Its use in England, where it has been ap- 

 plied with wond^erful results to almost every 

 sort of crop that grows in that country, is of 

 comparatively recent date; just long enough 

 to have spread a conviction of its efficacy so 

 widely as that seven or eight hundred ves- 

 sels are now employed in the " guano trade !" 



