GUANO. 171 



VIII. GUANO. 



Op those auxiliary manures that are at the com- 

 mand of the German farmer, guano occupies the first 

 and most important position ; not merely because it 

 is the most expensive and the most powerful, but 

 also and more especially because it forms an excel- 

 lent addition to all other manuring agents, natural 

 as well as artificial, by imparting to them a greater ac- 

 tivity, that is, by causing them to be more rapidly and 

 certainly efficacious. In most German states guano 

 is still almost unknown as a manure, although the 

 extraordinary results which English agriculture has 

 achieved by its instrumentality ought to excite zeal- 

 ous imitation. A manure that has already sustained 

 in England a trial of ten years, and in procuring 

 which English farmers have expended yearly from 

 £ 1,000,000 to £ 1,500,000, must not be considered 

 so unpractical and unprofitable as many German 

 agriculturists continue to believe. It is not saying 

 too much, when it is affirmed that two means con- 

 tributed to carry English agriculture successfully 

 through the crisis occasioned by the abolition of the 

 corn-laws ; and that these two means were guano 

 and draining. 



But even in Germany there are individual districts 

 which testify that German agriculture, in precisely 

 the same way as English, may derive the most 

 extraordinary advantages from the employment of 



