REPORT ON THE INDUSTRY OF MANURES. 
89 
5^.; reaching £10 in 1854 ; £11 in 1855 ; £12 in 1856; and £13, its highest recent 
point, in 1857. Since that time it has slightly declined ; and now rules at about £12.* 
The extraordinary success of the Peruvian guano trade led to voyages of discovery in 
search of fresh deposits ; several of which have been found and extensively worked on the 
islands of the West African coast and elsewhere. Nor has commercial enterprise confined 
itself to guano. Nitrate of sodium, formerly valued chiefly as a substitute for saltpetre 
in the sulphuric acid manufacture, has of late years come more and more largely into 
use as a powerful fertilizer; and the vast deposits of this substance successively opened 
up in several parts of the South American continent are now extensively worked for the 
supply of the English manure-market. As for bones and bone-ash, they have been im¬ 
ported by thousands of shiploads, not merely from the boundless South American pam¬ 
pas,—feeding-grounds and cemeteries of unnumbered herds, from immemorial time,—- 
but also from populous European countries, whose soil could by no means spare them so 
well, and whose fertility must have been seriously'impaired by "their withdrawal. 
Good and Evil of the Trade in Manures .—The manure trade presents itself, there¬ 
fore, in two aspects ; the one advantageous, the other detrimental to mankind. Nothing 
can be more advantageous than the collection and utilization of fertilizing residua formerly 
cast away as worthless. The fossil phosphates quarried out of the bosom of the earth, and 
the guano extracted (by the successive intervention of seaweeds, fishes, and penguins) 
from the depths of the ocean, are evidently so much treasure fairly won from nature for 
the legitimate enrichment of mankind. Even the withdrawal of recent bones and bone- 
ash, from plains untenanted as yet save by wild cattle, to fertilize the corn-fields of the 
populous old world, must be accounted a legitimate commerce. But the boundary line 
is overpassed, and the manure trade becomes abnormal, when bones are withdrawn from 
one populous country to enrich the exhausted fields of another. 
Nor is the detriment thus occasioned confined to the country whose soil is impoverished. 
In the closely-knit relations of modern commerce, the impoverishment of any one com¬ 
mercial country reacts on the prosperity of all the others, by diminishing the stock of 
exchangeable wealth in the world. If Germany, for instance, grows less corn, her pur¬ 
chasing power for foreign goods, say French or British, is proportionately diminished, and 
commerce suffers pro tanto. The gain to France or England is, therefore, but illusory, if 
either robs a neighbour’s soil to fertilize her own. 
In a work just published, Baron Liebig sternly rebukes England for her over-eager¬ 
ness to buy up, in the form of bones, the phosphatic wealth of countries less advanced 
than herself in financial and industrial power, and for the apparent recklessness with 
which she squanders forth these treasures (ill-gotten and ill-spent) down her innumerable 
sewers to the sea. The great agricultural teacher manifests alarm at the superabundant 
zeal with which the most diligent of his pupils obeys his lessons ; and to other nations 
he earnestly points out the ruinous consequences that must ensue to them, from the ex¬ 
portation of phosphates, drawn from their soil, to stay the exhaustion of the English 
fields. His cry of warning is couched in terms of almost passionate invective :— 
England (he exclaims) is robbing all other countries of the conditions of their fertility. 
Already, in her eagerness for bones, she has turned up the battle-fields of Leipzic, of 
Waterloo*and of the Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has carried away 
the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she removes from the shores 
of other countries to her own, the manurial equivalent of three millions and a half of 
men ; whom she takes from us the means of supporting, and squanders down her sewers 
to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs upon the neck of Europe, nay, of the entire 
world, and sucks the heartblood from nations, without a thought of justice towards 
them, without a shadow of lasting advantage for herself. 
It is impossible (he proceeds to say) that such iniquitous interference with the Di¬ 
vine order of the world should escape its rightful punishment; and this may perhaps 
overtake England even sooner than the countries she robs. Most assuredly a time 
awaits her, when all her riches of gold, iron, and coal will be inadequate to buy back 
a thousandth part of the conditions of life, which for centuries she has wantonly 
squandered away. 
* The Reporter is indebted for this information to his friend Mr. J. F. Gruning. 
X ‘Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaues.’ Von Justus von Liebig. Braun¬ 
schweig: Vicweg und Sohn, 1863. 
