276 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had exhausted the 

 soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an additional 

 cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily paid 

 7 per cent, to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure. 

 Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to com- 

 parative independence.^ A very large quantity of the bones 

 used came from South America.*^ Porter also noticed that 

 ' since 1 840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an 

 article called Guano ', the guana of Davy, ' from the islands of 

 the Pacific and off the coast of Africa '. Nitrate of soda was 

 just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. 

 In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sul- 

 phuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set 

 up his works at Deptford.^ 



Italian rye grass, not to be confounded with the old 

 English ray grass, had been introduced by Thomson of 

 Banchory, in 1834, from Munich;^ and though the swede 

 was known at the end of the eighteenth century, in many 

 parts it had only just become common. In Notts it was in 

 1844 described as having recently become 'the sheet-anchor 

 of the farmer ^ '. In Cheshire a writer at the same date said, 

 ' in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips 

 grown in the parish where I reside ; now there are from 60 to 

 80, and in many parts of the county the increase has been in 

 a much greater ratio.' '^ 



About this time a remedy was found in the south for 

 leaving the land idle during the nine months between har- 

 vesting the corn crop in August, and sowing the turnip crop 

 in the following June, by sowing rye, which was eaten green 

 by the sheep in May, a good preparation for the succeeding 

 winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used, and corn 

 and cake crushers soon followed. 



^ Caird, English Agriculture in 1850-1, pp. 252 sq. 



^ Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 142. 



' R.A.S.E. Journal, 1901, p. 25. * Ibid., 1896, p. 96. 



" Ibid, (ist ser.), vi. 2. ' Ibid, (ist ser.), v. 102. 



