46—1851.1 



THE 



AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



txfricted by boiling, pouriBg tlie broth, or the watery 

 gfction, upon his land. 



But the advantage of thus ascertaining the cause of 

 *e i^efulness of bones did not end here, for it inime- 

 fctelf suggested itself to the mind, that if the earthy 

 -fcpiphates contained in them constituted their prin- 

 22 value, advantage might be taken of those deposits 

 Jftbo SSLXne mater ^ al w Wch are occasionally met with in 

 4* earth itself. 



Hence a desire arose amongst the agriculturists of 

 jjjis country to ascertain the extent and nature of a 

 (opsation reported to exist in Spanish Estremadura, 

 lOttristing, according to the vague accounts given of it, 

 if this same mineral matter. 



I was in consequence induced myself to visit Spain in 

 die year 1843, in company with Captain Widdriugton, for 

 die purpose of exploring this locality ; and we were thus 

 l^bled, not only to report upon all the circumstances 

 relating to this interesting deposit, but also to bring 

 imy with us a sufficient quantity of the material itself, 

 to test its efficacy as a manure in comparison with that 

 of bones.* 



At the time, indeed, at which we made our Report, the 

 practical utility of this investigation might have appeared 

 problematical, because the Spanish Phosphorite was 

 J>ottd to lie at such a distance from roads and navigable 

 liras, that the expense of conveying it into England 

 placed it beyond the reach of the farmer. Nevertheless, 

 die efficacy found to belong to this description of mineral 

 phosphate when applied as a manure, not only confirmed 

 * in our belief, that bones owe their chief efficacy to 

 their earthy constituents — but also established this im- 

 portant principle, namely, that the mechanical condition 

 in which the material exists, does not exercise any im- 

 portant influence upon its action upon the land, and 

 hence held out encouragement for further search for it 

 being made in localities more accessible, or nearer home. 

 Nor were these efforts unrewarded ; although the success 

 was attributable to scientific investigations, not originally 

 undertaken with any practical object, but purely in that 

 uncakulating spirit of inquiry after truth which animates 

 the genuine Naturalist. 



Baron Liebig, indeed, in the year 1843, was ridiculed 

 by many for proposing, in a letter which he wrote to 

 the kte Sir Robert Peel, the coprolitic and bone beds, 

 which had been pointed out to him by Dr. Buckland 

 in the course of the tour he made through England, as 

 wbstitutes for bones in agriculture ; although even at 

 that time the experiments by which I had convinced 

 myself of the presence of minute proportions of phos- 

 phates in many secondary limestones f might have pre- 

 pared us to expect, that extinct animals would have left 

 in the strata the earthy materials contained in the soft, 

 as well as in the osseous parts of their structure, and 

 would thus, by their decomposition, have been the means 

 of accumulating a mass of phosphatic matter sufficient 

 to meet ali the exigencies of husbandry. 



This, however, would remain a matter of probable 

 conjecture only, until the discovery above alluded to, as 

 being the result of a purely scientific inquiry, had been 

 Hade— I mean until the detection of the real nature of 

 the so-called pseudo-coprolites of Suffolk had been 

 bought about in the manner which I am now about to 

 recount 



/ 



31 



of its deposition would be attracted to any hard b* 



whether of an animal or a mineral nature/that chinccd 



to offer. Hence, the origin of those 



as they are termed, which occur in the crag of Suflbik ; 



eoproli 



hence that of the phosphatic matter, incrutfMur m bo 



many instances the bones and tetdi of marine annua.- 



found in the same locality. 



The scientific exploration of tins district quicklv 

 showed the great abundance of these phosphatic nodule* 

 over a wide district from the River Orwell northward* 

 along the coast of Suffolk, and hence immediately sug- 

 gested ^ their importance for agricultural purposes. 

 Accordingly, a demand was soon created for this new 

 mineral fertiliser, and this demand has gone on steadily 

 increasing up to the present year, when, as I was lately 

 informed by a gentleman, who is the proprietor of some 

 mills at Harwich, at which the nodules are reduced to 

 powder, and thus 



and by Professor ii, oalow's in VmnUi iltuslii m ; 



had not the probability of bone earth bete? ^tMOfelv 



■n«J "> ■ « -tr.tr in the so-th U ■ m BnktaN put 

 before us by Dr. Hu ad, in roneequ<n*» of hie 



on coprolites, the peculiar eOsaev of thai 

 sp -. of fertiliser would hare been long overlooked, 

 and its virtues, even if known in the immediate ueifh- 

 bourL 1, would have been far f 

 appreciate! 



researches 



being so generally 



The same remark applies to another kind of manure 

 lateh introduced into English agriculture, the 





iered fit for conversion, through 

 the agency of sulphuric acid, into superphosphate, 

 nearly 10,000 tons of it are annually dug up, reduced to 

 powder, and consumed as manure. 



I have been assured that the landed proprietors of 

 the district in which the coprolites prevail have benefited 

 to the extent of from 300/. to 1.500/. througli this dis- 

 covery ; that the value of land throughout the coprolitie 

 district has risen in consequence; and that 50* labourin 



ITfc 



viia 



i 







It so happened, that the farmers in the neighbourhood 

 •f Felixstow, in the county of Suffolk, frequently came 

 Woss a multitude of oval or rounded pebbles, having a 

 waterworn appearance, which lie disseminated through 

 the loose sandy material of which the soil and subsoil of 

 their land is composed. 



Finding these bodies so hard and tough as not to be 

 easily reduced to powder, they were in the habit of 

 throwing them aside in heaps, as an hindrance to their 

 frying operations, until at length the attention of 

 * rtam geologists who visited the neighbourhood was 

 attracted to them, and amongst the rest that of Professor 

 Henslow of Cambridge. 



The latter, on his first inspection of them in 1843, 

 **paed,from the peculiar shape and twisted appearance 

 *toeh they often presented, that they might be coprolites, 



* we indurated faeces of some extinct animal ; but a 

 **e careful examination convinced him, that the form 

 T 6 ? possessed was attributable to the circumstance, 



■jt the material of which they were composed had 



?uected round any nucleus that might have presented 



Jj^S that nucleus consisting, in some cases of the teeth 



^tebrse of fishes, at others of fragments of some 



*^*ai matter. 



* ae n ^xt step in the investigation was to ascertain 

 chemical constitution of the nodules themselves, and 



tf c!* 8 e ^ ecte d through the exertions of Mr. Brown, 



Slanway, who had them submitted to chemical 



jj*vsis, which proved that they contained from 50 to 



J** <*nt of phosphate of lime. 

 aJ? 6 , discovery in the same locality of numerous 

 ^*y teeth, and of bones of the tympanum of the 



* °* the whale, referred by Professor Owen to several 

 JJ^ species of Cetacea, completed the solution of 



Jtobfem relating to the real origin of this deposit. 

 <f j7^ e c ^n now be but little doubt, that the phosphate 

 ^J? 118 was derived from the decomposition of the 

 jj?*?. an imals, which had peopled the seas in that 



*uate neighbourhood during the tertiary period. 

 1^ phosphate, at first dissolved in the sea water 

 p^Sh the agency of carbonic acid, was afterwards 

 P&ted, as that solvent escaped ; and at the moment 



men, boys, and worn, n are employed the grmfer part of 

 the year in digging up this material from the subsoil, or 

 in preparing it ior market. It is probable that the 

 landowners, who are reaping such advantages from the 

 discovery, arc not generally aware of the steps by which 

 it was arrived at, or we should surely have beard of 

 some expression of gratitude at least, if not some more 

 substantial token of the obligation felt by them to the 

 naturalist, who first pointed out to the world the 1 

 nature of this hitherto neglected and despised material. 



Nor is this the only discovery of the kind which 

 has been lately achieved in Great Britain. 



In the year 1848, Mr. Payne, of Farnhnm, having 

 remarked the extraordinary fertility, especially for 

 Wheat and Hop crops, belonging to the soil on a par- 

 ticular part of his farm, where a green band of mar), 

 more or less silicious, and abounding in fossils, made 

 its appearance ; and having moreover noticed, that this 

 same marl, when spread over other land, imparted to it 

 its own fertilising qualities, was induced to submit it to 

 analysis, and learnt from Professor Way, Consulting 

 Chemist to the Agricultural Society, that no less than 

 from 52 to 57 per cent, of bone earth phosphate was, on 

 the average, present in it. 



This discovery encouraged him and others, to under- 

 take a kind of geological survey of the distrirt in which 

 this marl occurs, and to enquire into its relation to the 

 contiguous rocks. From this examination it resulted, 

 that the phosphatic marl forms a seam along the line of 

 junction between the upper green sand and the chalk ; 

 the phosphoric acid spreading upwards also in smaller 

 quantities, to a certain extent, through Jthe chalk marl. 

 The gault also, which divides the upper from the 

 lower green sand, occasionally contains fossils which are 

 rich in phosphates ; but below the gault, the lower green 

 sand at and near its junction with it, is pervaded by 

 phosphatic nodules, almost as abundantly as the upper 

 green sand has been stated to be. 



Now as the beds in which these phosphates occur 

 extend from one side of England to the other in a direc- 

 tion from N.E. to S.W.,namely,from Flamborough Head, 

 in Yorkshire, to the southern coast, this mat* rial may 

 be looked for everywhere throughout this range; and, in 

 fact, by following such a clue, it has been detected 

 already about Petersfield, Guildford, Folkstone, in the 

 Isle of Wight, near Black Gang Chine, and between 

 Culver Cliff and Atherfield Point, and in sundry other 



localities. 



The presence of phosphate of lime has probably arisen 

 from some process of nature by which this mineral came 

 to replace the carbonate of which shells are commonly 

 made up ; and a striking proof that it was introduced 

 from without, after the organic matter had become 

 fossilised, is afforded hy the fact, that the external por- 

 tions of the Hampshire nodules are often richer in 

 phosphates than the internal ones. 



Professor Way informs us, that whilst the exterior 

 portions of a fossil sponge, analysed by him, contained 

 3217 per cent, of phosphate of lime, and only 6h7l of 

 carbonate, the intermediate contained only 13*87 of 

 phosphate to 67'14 of carbonate, and the interior 1026 

 of phosphate to 69.17 of carbonate. Since, therefore, 

 this phosphatic ingredient appears to have been of sub- 



tion of which is in some respects similar to that of 



ie phosphates. 1 alhnh to guano, of which within a 



few years so large an amount has been imported from 



Al " islands of the Pacific and elsewhere, that he annual 



iptiou is stated not to fall si rt uf 80,000 or 

 100,000 tons in i.reat Britain alone. 



In this indeed, as in the preceding instance, it may be 

 said that accident had the start of theory, for the Peru 

 vians, u nlightened by science, have < .plowed this 

 material to renovate their lands for many Otnturiei back. 

 It must, host, r , I* recollected, that although a cir an- 

 •taut ! report of this fact was made to u* by the moat 

 celebrated of modem travellers, in his well known Per- 

 sonal Narrative, nearly lialf a century ago. no attempt* 

 were made to introdu the substam < m urn pa, until 



the time when an m.n*sed hit . rest in afrieafcaral che- 



mis y had been awakened amongst us f owing in great 

 measure to the wide i ulation of Uarou Liebig a 

 masterly treatise. ^ 



At any "rate, even if guano had been introduced into 



hu^bandnr in dep endently of the suggestions of the 



chemist, it could not have U < n brought i) » general 



use with any degree of success v tit hi* aiwittanea. 



Two chances of disappointment await the farmer in 

 the purchase of this commodity—the first, the liability 

 10 adulteration t<» which it is subject after its in o na- 

 tion into the in try : the second, the extreme diff. nc ■ 

 in its value in the different localities from which it is 

 obtained. 



From neither of these hazards has the purchaser any 

 adequate eurity, except from chemistry. 



Without its aid, he possesses no means of judging 



whether he is applying to his land a material contain in;- 

 *>. r > per cent, of phosphate of lime or 24 ; 17 per nt. of 

 ammonia or 1 * per cent. ; or whether, indeed, th« re may 



not be as much as .50 or 60 par cent, of foreign matter 



intermixed with the really useful constituents of the 

 sample submitted to him, even without any intentional 



fraud on the part of the vendor. 



If, therefore, a farmer wonld feel mortified at being 

 so destitute of all practical knowledge, as to depend 

 wholly upon his farrier, whenever he attempted the 

 purchase of a horse ; ought he not to feel an inclination 

 to acquire so much knowledge at least of ch« mfctry, as 

 would enable him to lay in his sf< * of gaano without 

 appealing on every occasion to the chemist for advise ! 



Now in the case both of the phosphates and of guano, 

 the reason of the value of either commodity as a manure 

 would have remained to this day a mystery, had it not 

 been for scientific research. 



Without the light thus afforded, the farmer, safe only 

 so long as he persevered in the beaten track of his pre- 

 decessors, would in this instance, as > li as in so many 

 others, have found no guide to direct his footsteps, no- 

 principles upon which to modify his j ictice,with refer- 

 ence to any new circumstances that might arise ; or if 

 he ventured to appeal to principles at all, might have 

 been led still farther astray by false hypotheses, such as 

 those respecting the stimulating action of manures upon 

 the ground or upon the crop, from which so many 

 absurd inferences have been deduced. 



The principles upon which modern agriculturists pro- 

 ceed in applying phosphates or piano to their land are 

 now so generally understood, that »aen are apt to regard 

 them as self-evident, and to forget that within a few 

 years every one of them was either unknown, or 



disputed. 



Simple as it may appear to us in the present day, it 

 is by no means a self-evident proposition, that the grain 

 which nourisnes us contains essentially certain earthy 

 ingredients of a particular chemical constitution— that 

 these ingredients can neither be dispensed with, nor yet 

 be provided by the growin plant itself— that soils are 

 charged with them in variable proportions, bat always 

 in limited quantity ; and that consequently they often 

 require to be supplied from artificial sources, in order 

 that the crop may be enabled to grow luxuriantly. 



Although these facts may now be regarded as truisms, 

 and little gratitude felt towards chemistry for its share 

 in establishing them, yet it must be recollected, that 

 within 20 years, the contrary opinion was commonly 

 enough entertained, to induce me to undertake a set of 

 experiments partly for the purpose of disproving it ;* 

 with phosphate of lime for centuries to come, were all t h at a t the commencement of the present century, 



I Schroder obtained a prize from the Academy of Berlin, 



sequent introduction, we cannot feel confident that it 

 will be found uniformly present in the bed ; still there 

 can be little doubt, from what has been already ascer- 

 tained, that the aggregate amount stored up in the inte- 

 rior of the earth would be sufficient to manure our lands 



of the Royal Agricultural Society, vols. v. and vi. 



other sources of it exhausted. 



Now in the instance before us we cannot, it is true, 

 ascribe the whole merit of the discovery to scientifi 

 investigations, for the efficacy of the marl in question 

 was observed before its real nature had been discovered : 

 and it is therefore conceivable, that even in the absence 

 of all chemical knowledge, it might have been employed 

 as a manure, even although its true constitution had 

 remained a secret. 



Yet it is most probable, that had not the existence of 

 phosphatic nodules in thechalk of France been announced 

 in the first instance by Berthier ; had not their occur 

 renee also in England been subsequently made known 



llj^ -nee also in England been ^^^K^ ^ 



~ P< 2« ; aad 2d L€Cture ' OQ Agriculture, ldto, p. 43. I to us by Dr. Fitton's investigations in the Isle of \\ ight, 



for having, as was conceived, proved that a portion at 

 least of the earthy ingredients found in plants was 

 formed in the act of vegetation ; and that even at a later 

 period the same notion was indulged in, as at least not 

 impossible, in the case of the earthy matter of the eggs 

 of birds, by so eminent a philosopher as Dr. Prout.f 



Indeed the possibility of transmuting one simple 

 substance into another, can be by no means regarded 

 as a self-evident absurdity, and hence it is not so> 



• Linntesn Transaction*, 1833, On the Degree of Selection 

 Exercised by Plants with resrard to the eartby constituent* 

 presented to their absorbing- surfaces. 



t Phil. 'Trans, for 182*. 



