1879.] | 241 (Kneeland. 
action of heated waters, but only of what might be called atmos- 
pheric and surface agents of percolating guano solutions. 
Such material, if not available as guano, may be used in making 
the superphosphate of lime for fertilizing purposes; as such it has 
been imported by the cargo from the coasts of Venezuela and Guiana. 
Dr. A. A. Hayes, in the Proc. of Bost. Soc. Nat. History, Vol. v1, 
1856, p. 48-50, has thrown much light on these phosphatic guanos of 
the rainy islands, while treating of the state in which phosphate of 
lime exists in water, and of the action of the latter on bones, viz: 
one proportion of the tribasic or bone phosphate of lime is taken out 
by the carbonic and crenic acids developed during the putrefaction 
of the gelatine of the bones; this leaves the bibasic, more soluble 
phosphate, in solution; as the process goes on, a simple or monobasic 
phosphate remains, and even this may be so far dissolved as to ap- 
proach the state of phosphoric acid in solution and carbonate and 
crenate of lime deposited — then by disintegration of the last named 
salts, the lime is set free, ready to combine again with the phos- 
phoric acid. In the Enderbury guano, however, no such layer of 
fish bones can be called in to account for the phosphatic character of 
the deposit. Water containing carbonic acid from decomposed coral, 
or from any slight layer of vegetable matter on the surface, would 
exert a solvent action on the carbonate of lime, and would leave be- 
hind the phosphate of lime belonging to the organic matter of the 
guano. The formation of the phosphates in nature is not well un- 
derstood; we cannot attribute them here to vertebrate remains, nor 
to the shells of brachiopods or pteropods, nor any marine organisms, 
animal or vegetable. 
The following are the analyses of the Enderbury specimens — the 
powdered specimens in the bottles, marked 1, 2, 3, by the Company’s 
chemist on the island—the others in the Laboratory of the Mass. 
Institute of Technology, by Mrs. E. H. Richards and Miss M. O. 
Glover; the first three in January, 1873, the fourth in Jan., 1879: 
No. 4 contains . . 41.898 Phosphoric Acid. 
1.260 Carbonic Acid. 
45.82 Lime, 
Equivalentto  . . 91.48 Tribasic Phosphate of Lime. 
2.86 Carbonate of Lime. 
5.52 Water and Organic Matter. 
‘PROCEEDINGS B. 8. N. He— VOL. XX. 16 NOVEMBER, 1879, 
