Annual Report of the Consulting Chemist. 197 
These samples of Lobos Island guano, it will be seen, were 
poor in ammonia and rich in phosphates. Their condition gene- 
rally was good, but I need hardly say that they were much inferior 
in value to the deposits at Pabillon de Pica and Independencia. 
Messrs. J. H. Schroeder and Co. are the general agents for the 
sale of Peruvian Government guano in the United Kingdom, 
under Dreyfus Brothers and Co's. contract with the Peruvian 
Government. Under the contract of the 7th of June, 1876, the 
Peruvian Government likewise consign guano to the Peruvian 
Guano Company, Limited : — a new Company, who have ap- 
pointed Mr. W. A. Rau as their agent. In a circular issued 
by this new Guano Company it is announced that the sale- 
price of each cargo will for the future be fixed on a scale based 
on the chemical analysis of an average sample of it ; but no 
mention is made of this scale. In the absence of information 
as to what the scale is to be, it is impossible to form an 
opinion whether or not the price at which each cargo will be 
sold will correspond, as stated in the circular, exactly with the 
real value of the guano as a fertiliser. 
The system of selling Peruvian guano on the basis of an 
analysis is no doubt sound and just in principle; but in order 
to carry it out in practice, so that it may be beneficial to indi- 
vidual farmers, who buy half a ton or one or two tons of guano 
at a time, it appears to me most desirable for the contractors to 
incorporate, at the different ports of importation, high and low 
quality guano, of a good friable character, into one fairly uniform 
bulk, and to sell but one quality to the retail dealer on the basis of 
a guaranteed analysis. Any wet or damaged cargoes should be 
treated— as is done by Messrs. OhlendorfT — with sulphuric acid, 
and made into a dissolved Peruvian guano, the quality of which 
can be guaranteed by analysis with great precision. 
The preceding analyses show plainly how variable are the 
qualities, and consequently the value, of the different guano 
deposits in South Peru ; hence the guarantee that all guano sold 
by the New Peruvian Guano Company, Limited, is genuine as 
imported from Peru has lost the significance it once possessed, 
for, in point of fact, some of the deposits are poor enough without 
any adulteration. 
If good and bad guano, varying greatly in quality, were thrown 
into the retail market, the consequence would be, it strikes me, 
that many guano dealers would in preference buy from the con- 
signees cargoes of low quality, for which they probably would 
not have to pay more than 8/. 8s. to 9/. 9s. a ton, and be strongly- 
tempted to sell such low-quality samples at something like the 
price which farmers hitherto have been in the habit of paying for 
genuine Peruvian guano. Dealers and others who buy 30 tons 
