ft 
1879.) 235 [Kneeland. 
colors, and even a greater number of color names, than civil- 
ized men. 
General Meeting. April 16, 1879. 
The President, Mr. T. T. Bouvé, in the chair. Fourteen 
persons present. 
The following papers were read: 
ON THE MINERALIZED PHOSPHATIC GUANOS OF THE EQUATORIAL 
Paciric Istanps. By SamMuEL KNEELAND, M.D. 
In 1872, while strolling along the wharves at Honolulu, Sandwich 
Islands, I saw a small schooner which had just arrived from Ender- 
bury Island, in the equatorial Pacific. Her cargo was guano; but it 
looked so unlike the Peruvian guano, and presented such a rock-like 
appearance, that I spent a week in ascertaining the facts about the 
deposit, in obtaining specimens, and in having them analyzed. What 
I present to-night is the result of these inquiries, pursued after I re- 
turned, with a few remarks on the ordinary and on other similar 
Pacific guanos. The subject seems to me interesting from the points 
of views of Chemical and Economic Geology, Geological Time, and 
actually occurring metamorphosis of rocks of animal origin. © 
Guano, as generally understood and used as a fertilizer, consists of © 
the excrements of sea-fowl, urinary and intestinal combined, contain- ~ 
ing often their decomposed bodies and eggs, the remains of their 
fishy food, and occasionally the bones of marine animals. It is found 
accummulated in immense quantities on some of the Pacific islands, 
and near the coasts of South America and Africa. 
Though well known to the ancient Peruvians as a valuable fertilizer 
the attention of Europe was first drawn to it by Humboldt in 1804; 
as evidence of the long time it must have required to form deposits 
fifty to sixty feet deep, he stated that the accumulation of the pre- 
ceding three hundred years was only a few lines thick. He caused 
it to be analyzed by the best chemists of the day, who found it to 
be composed of phosphates of ammonia and lime, with urate and 
oxalate of ammonia, organic matters and sand. It was not used as 
a fertilizer in Europe, though Humphry Davy spoke of its value 
