132 
Chemical Report. 
similar artificial manures are manufactured, or that the price of 
such manures will be raised in the approaching season. 
On account of the great importance of these phosphatic 
mineral deposits, I took an opportunity last summer to visit the 
Nassau phosphorite mines, and was struck with the great extent 
of country over which these mines are spread. At the time of 
my visit new shafts were sunk in every direction, and the phos- 
phatic deposit has now been found all along the valley of the 
Lahn. In the immediate neighbourhood of Limburg, the place 
where the phosphate was first discovered, the deposit was still 
worked ; but more extensive deposits have recently been dis- 
covered at Dehrn, and in the neighbourhood of Wetzlar. Unfor- 
tunately a large proportion of the Nassau phosphate is much 
impregnated Avith oxide of iron, a constituent which is objection- 
able in the production of soluble phosphate of lime. On an 
average the better importations of German phosphate into 
England yield from 60 to 65 per cent, of phosphate of lime, and 
though this is not a high percentage, yet the comparatively low 
price at which this mineral is sold renders it a useful material to 
the manufacturer of artificial manures. 
Nassau phosphate of a very superior quality, containing barely 
30 per cent, of phosphate of lime, I was informed when travel- 
ling last summer in Germany, has been used in that country in 
a finely ground state, without having been previously treated 
with sulphuric acid. When applied to the land in large quan- 
tities, this mineral, like chalk-marl, no doubt will benefit the 
crops grown upon the land to some extent, but it appears to me 
very questionable whether the application of a merely powdered 
very poor mineral phosphate can be carried out with advantage 
to the farmer beyond a reasonable distance from the locality 
where it occurs. 
With respect to feeding substances, 1 would observe that the 
great scarcity of green food and the failure of the root-crops have 
compelled farmers to become purchasers of oil-cakes and corn to 
a much larger extent than in ordinary years. 
In consequence of the increased demand of purchased food, 
the sophistication of oil-cakes, I regret to say, has received a 
great impetus. I hardly remember any season in which I had to 
examine so many inferior and adulterated linseed-cakes as in 
the past. The subject deserves the most serious consideration of 
the agriculturist, for the buyer of adulterated oil-cakes generally 
is not only defrauded by paying high prices for inferior feeding 
materials, but occasionally he runs the risk of endangering the 
health of his stock by giving them adulterated oil-cakes, inasmuch 
as those who deal in such cakes, from want of knowledge and 
cupidity, occasionally incorporate with feeding cakes substances 
which are positively poisonous to animals. 
