42 
Agricultural Progress and 
pears that twenty-five years ago the best-informed man of his day on 
agricultural topics considered that furrow draining- was " too new 
to be altogether beyond the risk of disappointment ;" that the mis- 
chief caused to vegetation by stagnant water was " unexplained ;" 
and that, in his opinion, Smith of Deanston's only motive for 
making his drains 3 feet deep was to put them out of the way of his 
subsoil-plough. 
The great addition made to the resources of the agriculturist, 
by the extensive supplies of what are termed artificial manures, 
cannot be left unnoticed, though the annual importation of some 
hundreds of thousands of tons of guano, nitrate of soda, &c. &c, 
has become of late .years so much a matter of course that it is 
difficult to realise the fact, that twenty years ago this trade had 
barely commenced. During the Liverpool Meeting of the Royal 
Agricultural Society, in 1841, the writer, in company with the 
late Mr. Pusey, visited the well-known establishment of the 
Messrs. Skirving, where a sample of the first cargo of Peruvian 
guano was shown them as a great novelty.* At that time the 
supply of artificial manures consisted of very moderate importa- 
tions of bones and rapecake ; and, with these exceptions, the 
British farmer's command of fertilizers was confined to the 
sweepings of his chimneys and the contents of his own farmyard. 
This seems almost as incredible at the present day as would 
have been the announcement, in 1839, that a score of years would 
not pass before a numerous fleet of vessels would be permanently 
engaged in the artificial-manure trade, and when the mountain 
ranges of Europe, the plains of America, and the islands of the 
tropical seas would all be ransacked for materials to enrich our 
turnip-fields, and thus enable us to increase our flocks and our 
herds. Yet those who looked somewhat incredulously on the 
brown, effete-looking substance then known by the Spanish name 
of " huano," have lived to see it become one of the principal 
means by which British agriculture has succeeded in producing 
the quantity of savoury chops and much-loved roast-beef required 
to satisfy the cravings of John Bull and his numerous family. 
The proper management of manure, whether liquid or solid, 
has since 1839, been removed from the region of guesswork, 
and is now regulated by simple maxims founded on the ascer- 
tained processes of chemical decomposition. The mode in which 
the foregoing and other fundamental principles recently incor- 
porated in the agricultural code act as guides to the practical 
farmer, will probably be placed before the reader in the most in- 
telligible and connected form by describing in general terms the 
* The first comiynment of guano to this country consisted of thirty bags, sent 
■Inly, 1839, to Messrs. Myers and Co. of Liverpool. 
