Value of Artificial Manures. 
533 
have not the ready sale for meat, Avhich leads many English 
farmers to buy artificial food rather than artificial manure ; 
while if they had the sale, the scattered and minute shapes of 
their occupancies would impede them greatly in the rapid 
feeding of stock. The Imperial Government having lately 
shown its deep interest in the advancement of agriculture, by 
the deputation sent to our Lincoln meeting, I cannot but advert 
to this easy method of preventing deficient crops, from which 
France has lately suffered, as it struck me forcibly during a 
recent journey in that country, that one of the simplest improve- 
ments in agricultural practice would there prove the most 
effectual. 
XXV. — On the Value of Artificial Manures. By J. Thomas 
Way, Consulting Chemist to the Society, 15, Weibeck Street, 
Cavendish Square. 
It is now nearly seven years since I published in this Journal an 
extensive series of analyses of the different varieties of guano, 
with the view of fixing a standard of composition by which indi- 
vidual samples of this valuable manure might be judged. At 
the same time I endeavoured to show by reference to other 
available sources of its different ingredients at what price the 
purchaser of guano might be supposed to obtain these in the 
manure in question. 
That these calculations have been of great service both to the 
consumer and manufacturer of manures I have every reason to 
believe, and the use which other chemists have subsequently 
made of the same method would seem to prove that it is not open 
to much objection. At a somewhat later period (1851) I extended 
the same calculations to superphosphate of lime. 
Guano and superphosphate of lime do not however include all 
the ingredients entering into the composition of manures, and it 
has been thought desirable to fix the price of other substances 
on a similar principle, and at the same time to make such revi- 
sions in the list as the various changes or improvements in the 
manure trade might call for. 
An admirable paper on this subject, lately published by Dr. 
Voelcker, of the Royal Agricultural College of Cirencester, will 
be found in the third volume of the Journal of the Bath and 
West of England Society. In the paper in question Dr. Voelcker 
explains very fully the difficulties lying in the way of a perfect 
valuation of the ingredients of manure, and his views on this 
subject so fully coincide with my own, that were his paper readily 
accessible to all the readers of this Journal I could be content to 
