On Nitrate of Soda. 



357 



soda is broken into small pieces, put into boilers, water intro- 

 duced, and the whole boiled ; the nitrate is held in solution, 

 whilst the earthy matter, salt, sulphates, 6cc., are separated, and 

 fall to the bottom of the vessel : the saturated solution of nitrate 

 is let into a reservoir, where it deposits any remaining earthy 

 matter ; the clear liquor is run into shallow troughs, exposed to 

 the sun ; crystallization takes place, containing only 2 to 3 per 

 cent, of impurities, and it is then ready to be conveyed to the coast 

 for exportation." 



Now, inasmuch as there is no rain, neither is there firewood near 

 the hundred refineries ; consequently in these Peruvian deserts they 

 employ as fuel English coals brought round Cape Horn to Iquique, 

 and thence of course upon mules' backs to La Noria. But for 

 agricultural purposes I cannot think that the nitrate need be re- 

 fined at all. We have seen that the proportion of nitrate contained 

 in the rough salt reaches 85 per cent., while the only impurities are 

 salts, which might themselves be rather beneficial, and are cer- 

 tainly harmless to crops. The rough material lies on the sur- 

 face, within a few miles of the shore, not near Iquique only, but 

 along a wide range of coast. It may be dug like gravel, and I 

 cannot see why it should not come to England for 6/. instead of 

 16/. per ton, as the price of the pure nitrate existing in this unre- 

 fined ore. A few^ miles of common cart-road are all that is w^anted : 

 if the country had happily belonged to men of the United 

 States, there would have been a railroad from La Noria to Iquique 

 already. Let us trust some merchant or some company will 

 undertake the venture, which must at once, if successful, effect 

 another desirable object, and greatly lower the price of guano, 

 for happily this wide tract of nitrate-bed provided by nature is 

 not capable of being monopolised, like the guano islands, by any 

 Government of Peru. Nay, if that Government should feel called 

 upon to interpose impediments, a rival source of nitrate exists in 

 the contiguous desert of Atacama within the territory of Bolivia. 



In saying that cubic nitre may compete with guano as a manure, 

 I rely on the experiments made by Mr. Law^es, with his coadjutor 

 Dr. Gilbert, upon his farm at Rothampstead, and I rejoice to 

 see that these experiments, from which when they first appeared 

 in our Journal I could not in justice withhold my own testimony, 

 are now fully appreciated in Germany. Dr. Strumpf, in his 

 Agricultural Chemistry,^ published at Berlin, declares, with the 

 readiness of his countrymen to recognise scientific merit in any 

 quarter, that " Mr. Lawes has done more for the advance 

 of agriculture than any government ever did, by obtaining a 

 practical solution of the questions on the theory of manure, 



* Forfschritte der Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 

 von Dr. F. L. Strumpf. Berlin, 1853, p. 255. 



