Money-value of Niglit-Soil and other Manures. 
120 
On the other hand, my advice to a friend who can <?et London 
manure delivered at a wharf abutting on his farm at about 5s. per 
ton is, " Never mind stock-farming, except for choice specimens ; 
sell jour straw, and buy manure." This view tallies very well with 
Dr. Voelcker's statements of common practice ; but it cannot be 
reconciled with a valuation which assigns 13s. as the price of a 
ton of dung delivered. Is there not some ground to ask for its 
revision ? 
If, however, this scale of valuation is unsound, has it not been 
practically mischievous? If a good sample of genuine Peruvian 
guano, or a good superphosphate, was analysed and valued 
■at this rate, the Report, until lately, often assigned to it a 
value considerably above the market price. Is it to be won- 
dered, then, that the Peruvian Government was tempted to raise 
-the price to the estimate, overlooking the fact, that at this same 
theoretic rate straw manure was worth 13s. per ton, or 50 per 
cent, more than its selling price, after due allowance was made 
for the expense of carting ? The price of guano has been raised, 
the market disturbed, the buyer and seller put into antagonism 
one to the other, and the issue of a struggle injurious to both 
parties will alone decide whether the existing scale of guano- 
valuations was practically sound or not. Meanwhile the enhanced 
price of meat, the ample supplies of oil-cake drawn fiom all 
quarters, improvements in breeding and feeding cattle, and, it 
may be, in treating them under disease, all tend to lower the 
price of that costly constituent ammonia. 
To come now to some particulars. The received standard 
values potash at 2d. per lb., and some authorities have set it as high 
as 'dd. per lb. How is this conclusion arrived at ? It may be 
that this element is essential for all our crops, that some soils are 
deficient in it, that it cannot be bought in any commercial form 
at a cheaper rate ; but we farmers do not buy it in any such form. 
It some of our fields are deficient, we apply it in straw or in 
burnt clay ashes brought from other fields, probably at a much 
cheaper rate. If all are defective, we husband our resources, as 
we readily can do, or if our land has a good staple, we rely on 
the stores in the subsoil. No doubt potash has a considerable 
value, and an additional supply is often serviceable, and not 
always ready at hand ; but still the farmer, I may say, never buys 
it, by itself and for itself, at commercial rates. Then, is it not 
rash to guess at a value of three or four times as high as that of 
insoluble phosphate in its best form ? * 
* On this point Liebig (in his preface to ' Letters on Modern Agriculture') 
admits that in the production of corn and flesh, the alkalies in the faraiyard- 
manure remain in the field, and in the progress of cultivation their quantity rather 
increases than diminishes; and Professor Anderson, in 1857, whilst ho valued 
VOL. XXIV. K 
