220 
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 
Oil as a Manure. —All crops chemically considered 
are composed, 
1st. Of mineral constituents, as a base, viz : of com¬ 
pounds of soda, potassa lime, and magnesia, with phos¬ 
phoric, sulphuric, muriatic, and carbonic acids, also a 
little sulphur and iron, and other constituents are called 
the fertilizing ingredients of the soil, and are obtained 
by the plant from the soil only. 
2d. Of gaseous constituents, viz : oxygen, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, and carbon, supplied to the plants in suf¬ 
ficient quantity by the atmosphere in the forms of wa¬ 
ter, carbonic acid, and ammonia, and form all the com¬ 
pounds obtained from plants in the form of gum, sugar, 
starch, and gluten, and exist in them in the pro¬ 
portion varying from 90 to 99 parts in the 100 of all 
growing crops, the remaining (from 1 to 10 parts) be¬ 
ing mineral constituents. 
That these gaseous constituents, though forming such 
a large proportion of all vegetable matter, are obtained 
entirely from the atmosphere and need not be added 
by the farmer. 
That it is the presence in the soil of the mineral con¬ 
stituents only that renders it fertile and productive, by 
affording to the growing crops a sufficiency of these in¬ 
gredients to form a proper and sufficiently strong plant 
in its young state, and by that means enabling it to 
take full advantage of the constituents supplied by the 
atmosphere, and so form a full-grown and healthy plant 
such as is required for the production of a good crop 
of grain. 
That the most eminent agricultural chemists find that 
barren soils are deficient in these mineral constituents 
only, and that fertle soils contain them in abundance. 
That, therefore, the whole secret of tilling the soil 
consists in the addition of the mineral constituents 
only, and in such proportions as are required for the 
crops to be produced, trusting to the atmosphere en¬ 
tirely for the supply of the gaseous constituents. 
That oil is composed of gaseous constituents entire¬ 
ly, and can not give to the soil or crop any mineral 
constituents, but by its decomposition it affords a stim¬ 
ulating compound (ammonia) which forces the plant to 
excessive growth, and completely exhausts the soil of 
any mineral constituents that it may contain, and thus 
it is like a spur to a tired horse, in lieu of a feed of 
oats, and that land tilled with oil must soon become ex¬ 
hausted and nearly worthless. 
Guano in the Island of Ichaboe. —It appears from an 
interesting article in the Glasgow Herald, that it was 
through the information of the master of an American 
whaler, at the Cape of Good Hope, given to Captain 
Farr, an Englishman, that the first cargo of guano was 
brought to this country from Ichaboe, by the latter, who 
has since made a second voyage to the island, and 
pointed out the way to other ships, in accordance with 
a negotiation entered into with their owners. T&e 
writer in the Herald thus concludes:— 
At the time of Captain Farr’s first visit, the island 
was covered with penguins, gannets, &c., but princi¬ 
pally the former, in numbers which altogether defied 
calculation. They seemed to have no acquaintance 
with, nor fear of man, and in fact offered a resistance 
to his encroachment on a domain which had been pe¬ 
culiarly their own for thousands of years. Since the 
crews of so many ships, however, were located at the 
island, the birds have almost entirely deserted their 
former territory, and retired to fulfil the purposes of 
their nature in more remote and inaccessible shores. 
The specimens of the penguin from Ichaboe which we 
have seen are about two feet in height, and as a great 
portion of their time is spent in the sea, they are fur¬ 
nished with small flaps or paddles, instead of wings, | 
which enable them to progress through the water with 
great velocity, though they are unable to fly. The fe¬ 
male lays and sits upon one egg at a time, and a hole 
scratched in the deposite subserves all the purposes of a 
nest. In this way a succession of incubations go on 
for several months in the year, the young bird making 
its way to the sea as soon as it is able. It is the opin¬ 
ion of the seamen, however, that vast numbers of 
them never reach their destined home in the waters, 
but are crashed to death in their progress to it, by the 
dense battalions of birds which have almost to main¬ 
tain a struggle for bare standing-room; and in this 
way the guano heaps are increased as well by the 
bodies of their birds as by their droppings. The bodies 
of seals are also found on the surface of the guano de- 
posites, which leads to the belief that they may have 
occasionally taken shelter there from a storm or hur¬ 
ricane, and having been overpowered by the poteney 
of the ammoniacal vapor, have been unable to return 
to the water, and died where they lay. 
The guano which is brought to this country is found 
under a loose covering of decayed birds, recent dung, 
&c., and it is so firmly imbedded that it requires to be 
dug out by the laborious operations of the pick-axe. 
When thus disengaged it is put into bags, and trans¬ 
ferred by means of a sort of rope-ladder, from the island 
to a boat, which lies at the outer edge of the surf, 
and thence it is daily emptied into the hold of the 
vessel, which is anchored at a short distance. Ten 
men will lift about fifteen tons per day, but the opera¬ 
tion is a very laborious one, and the sun is so power¬ 
ful that few of the crews escape without having their 
faces and hands blistered so that the outer skin is peel¬ 
ed oft’. The trip to or from the island extends to from 
fifty-five to seventy days, or, including the time neces¬ 
sary to take in a cargo, a voyage out and home extends 
to from six to seven months. When Captain Farr left 
Ichaboe he estimated the guano deposite on that island 
alone to extend to one thousand feet in length, by five 
hundred feet in breadth, with an average depth of 
thirty-five feet, containing, perhaps, from 700,000 to 
800,000 tons. It is evident, therefore, that this supply 
will soon be exhausted in fertilizing the soil of Great 
Britain and her dependencies, but it is to be hoped that 
vast stores of it yet exist, which have hitherto never 
been disturbed by man. On this subject we quote the 
following cheering statement from the South African 
Commercial Advertiser, published at Cape Town in 
January last:— 
“ On the rocky headlands, or on the rocky and un¬ 
molested islands on the west coast, both within and be¬ 
yond the boundary of this colony, where the sea-fowl, 
from a vast expanse of open ocean, come to breed, 
enormous masses of this manure have recently been 
discovered; and it seems probable that all the way up 
the coast into the gulf of Guinea, and beyond it, sim¬ 
ilar treasures await the agriculture of the world, by 
which means the sea will render back to the land much 
more matter fitted to form organized, that is, vegetable 
and animal substances, than the rivers carry down inK 
its depths, or the fleets of the nations deposite in their 
course over its surface.”— New Farmers’ Jour. 
The Shirt-Tree of America. —In the forests of the 
Oronook, there is a tree which often attains the height 
of fifty feet. The natives make shirts of the bark 
of this tree, which requires only to be stripped off, 
and to be deprived of its red and fibrous parts; the 
shirt is thus formed without seam. The head is thrust 
through one end, and two lateral holes are cut to admit 
the arms; the natives wear these shirts in the rainy 
seasons, which, according to Humboldt, are equal to 
| any of our Macintoshes for keeping out the wet. 
