334 
GUANO MANURE. 
I have have examined a portion of the evacua¬ 
tions of the domestic pigeon. It contains uria 
(which may be considered as carbonate of am¬ 
monia,) muriate of ammonia, phosphate of lime, 
phosphate of ammonia, and magnesia, uric acid, 
and a large proportion of vegetable and animal 
matter in the most favorable state to become the 
food of plants. In collecting this manure, a por¬ 
tion of the soil should be taken up with it, as it 
contains a part of the soluble salts. I consider this 
substance of about one tenth the value of guano. 
That one ton of it to the acre would be a good 
dressing for wheat or any other crop that requires 
much nitrogen or phosphoric acid. 
Charles H. Raymond, M. D. 
Lecturer on Agricultural Chemistry. 
Buffalo , Sept. 16, 1844, 
GUANO MANURE. 
Guano, whether from Peru or Africa, may be 
separated into two marked and important kinds 
of ingredients : the volatile, or easily evaporable, 
and the fixed or permanent ingredients. 
The volatile ingredients are those which evapo¬ 
rate readily at the common temperature of the at¬ 
mosphere, which contain the ammonia of the 
guano, and are the nitrogenous or azotised ingre¬ 
dients. They consist chiefly of carbonate, oxal¬ 
ate, phosphate, and humate of ammonia ; they are 
contained in all barn-yard and stable manure, and 
are of the utmost importance to vegetation, for 
there is not a portion of the vegetable without ni¬ 
trogen in some shape or other; they powerfully 
excite vegetable action, and are consequently in¬ 
dispensable to produce a luxuriance of growth. It 
is to this azotised ingredient that is chiefly to be 
attributed the surprising growth of plants watered 
with solution of guano, for nearly all these am- 
moniacal ingredients are soluble in water. Be¬ 
fore I quit this subject let me say a few words on 
the humate of ammonia. 
Of all the nitrogenous compounds, this retains 
the ammonia with the greatest tenacity—humus 
is found in all soils which contain organic matter. 
What a wise provision of nature, that an ingre¬ 
dient in almost every soil should be able so tena¬ 
ciously to retain the substance indispensable to 
vegetation, ammonia, which is poured down in 
every shower of rain, exists in every flake of snow. 
The plants have the power to extract it from its 
combination with humus then just as they want 
it, and the rich manure of snow water is no longer 
a fable; for the ammonia is retained in the snow 
by the coldness of the temperature, until the ge¬ 
nial warmth of spring sets it free to promote the 
growth and vigor of the young year. One of the 
most valuable ingredients, therefore, of guano is 
the ammonia, or rather the ammoniacal salts, and 
by the quantity of these its price in Europe is very 
much regulated. The best Peruvian guano con¬ 
tains thirty to thirty-eight per cent, of these salts, 
some from Chili is quite inferior and only contains 
eight to twelve per cent.; the best Ichaboe from 
twenty to twenty-seven per cent., the cargo of the 
Samos, just arrived from Ichaboe contains 26^ 
per cent., and is a very superior parcel. It has I 
been stated by Dr. Davy that he was unsuccessful 
in finding uric acid in the African guano ; I have 
found it, and I see by recent analyses from Eng¬ 
land, that it has been found in many parcels to 
the amount of 1\ per cent. This is by no means 
an extraordinary circumstance ; this substance and 
its immediate combinations are rapidly and easily 
transformed, naturally when moistened, or during 
the process of analysis, into carbonate of ammo¬ 
nia, &c. The character of Dr. Davy as a chemist 
forbids any other supposition, than that in the 
samples he analyzed, this transformation had taken 
place previous to their being placed in his hands. 
The latest discovery respecting this portion of 
guano, is by a German cheUiist, Unger, who has 
found in it that exceedingly rare substance, the 
Xanthic oxide of Marcet, hitherto only found in 
very small quantity in urinary calculi. This, al¬ 
though of no agricultural importance, is extremely 
interesting to chemists and physiologists. 
The next to be considered are the fixed or per¬ 
manent ingredients. These may again be divided 
into two kinds, those soluble, and those insoluble, 
or nearly so, in water. 
Those soluble in water are chiefly salts of pot¬ 
ash, as phosphate, muriate, and sulphate of potash. 
I trust that agricultural chemistry is so generally 
understood now, as to make it unnecessary forme 
to discuss here the value of potash to the farmer; 
he knows that this or soda exists in every manure. 
In the quantifies of these ingredients there does 
not seem to be much difference in the Peruvian 
and best African, there is usually from ten to fif¬ 
teen percent., more than this I think would hardly 
be advantageous. By this division of ingredients 
the farmer may know what he adds to .his soil in 
using a solution of guano in water. Such solu¬ 
tions should never be stronger than one pound of 
guano to twenty gallons of water, and may be 
used where convenient three or four times during 
the growing , not the ripening season. 
We now come to the last division of ingredients, 
those insoluble in water, or nearly so. 
They consist chiefly of the phosphate of lime 
and of magnesia, and the oxalate of lime. These 
substances, although insoluble in plain water, are 
soluble in many of the liquids and compounds they 
meet with in the soil, and when in contact with 
the roots of plants. They are of the greatest im¬ 
portance to vegetation, for two of them are con¬ 
tained in the seeds of all cereal grains, and par¬ 
ticularly in the embryo plant or plumule of the 
seed. They are contained in exceedingly small 
quantity in the usual manures, and hence the 
fields in England which have been so severely 
taxed for them by the incessant taking off of wheat 
crops, could yield them no longer until replenished 
by bone manure or phosphate of lime. The 
quantity of these in guano varies much, say from 
20 to 40 per cent.: about 30 per cent, is a good 
quantity. Beside these ingredients, there is 
generally moisture or water varying from 10 to 
30 per cent. On this subject it seems only neces¬ 
sary for me to say, that the less water the bet¬ 
ter, not only because it is the least valuable ingre¬ 
dient, but because water rapidly decomposes the 
ammoniacal compounds. 
