60 
On Bats' Guano. 
of another. The great aim to be kept steadily in view in all 
drainage operations should therefore be not the withdrawal of 
the water only, but the proper regulation of the surplus rainfall : 
the so contriving the works that a thorough command can be 
kept over the supply, letting it go when over-abundant, but 
retaining all that is necessary for future wants. It is the more 
essential that attention should be prominently called to this view 
of the case, in the present feeling of the country with regard to 
floods, and with the probability of large works being undertaken 
to improve the rivers of the land. It is feared that the channels 
may become so enlarged and improved by the removal of ob- 
structions as to drain away too rapidly the whole winter supply, 
and the water-level be so reduced in the soil that the latter evil 
will be greater than the first ; that our pastures may become 
ruined, and the land dried up for want of water. In all schemes 
of improvement the means of holding up the water by weirs or 
sluices are as important as those for enlarging and clearing the 
water-way. Let water be regarded as a valuable servant, useful 
for drinking, for cleansing our persons and our belongings, for 
the growth of vegetation, for manufactures, for driving our ma- 
chinery, for irrigating our lands, for facilitating inland locomo- 
tion, and for refreshing and keeping bright and pleasant the face 
of the country. There is nothing that adds so much to the beauty 
of a landscape as water — whether in a quiescent state, as in a lake, 
surrounded by verdure-clad hills, or moving as in a mountain- 
stream or a waterfall : neither is there any music more pleasant 
than that of water, whether it be the murmur of the mighty 
ocean, the ripple of the stream over the pebbles in a trout-stream, 
or the plash Irom a waterfall embosomed in ferns and mosses. 
II. — On Bats' Guano. By Dr. Augustus Voelcker, "t'.R.S. 
The term guano, as is well known, is usually applied to the 
dry and more or less decomposed excrement of sea-birds, exten- 
sive deposits of which are found on the rocky promontories of 
the coasts of South America and South Africa and on the islands 
that skirt them. The same name is likewise given to a variety of 
brown, yellow, or reddish-coloured powdery natural phosphatic 
fertilisers, the chief supplies of which come from the high table- 
land near the coast of Bolivia, between Peru and Chili, and 
from a number of small uninhabited islands situated in the 
Caribbean Sea and the South Pacific Oce.in. 
Guano is a name appropriately bestowed upon those natural 
j)hosphatic fertilisers, which can readily be shown to be the direct 
