A supplement to Ures Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, : containing a clear exposition of their principles and practice. . of these excrements appear to be the exist-ence of a soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay, in a country where the birds areallowed to live for ages undisturbed by man or mans works, and where, moreover, the cli-mate is very drv, free not only from rain, but also from heavy dews. These conditions appear to have been combined to a remarkable extent on the coasts otPeru and Bolivia, between latitudes 13° north, and 21° south of the equator, for althoughbey
A supplement to Ures Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, : containing a clear exposition of their principles and practice. . of these excrements appear to be the exist-ence of a soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay, in a country where the birds areallowed to live for ages undisturbed by man or mans works, and where, moreover, the cli-mate is very drv, free not only from rain, but also from heavy dews. These conditions appear to have been combined to a remarkable extent on the coasts otPeru and Bolivia, between latitudes 13° north, and 21° south of the equator, for althoughbeyond this region the flocks of cormorants, flamingoes, cranes, and other sea-fowl, appearto be equally numerous, vet the excrement is rapidly carried away by the ram or dew. ? It is then the dryness of the climate chieflv which has permitted the guano to accumu-late on these coasts, for, savs Mr. Darwin : * In Peru, real deserts occur over wide tractsof country. It has become a proverb that rain never falls in the lower part of Peru And again : The town of Iquique contains about 1,000 inhabitants, and stands on a little 825. plain of sand at the foot of a great wall of rock, 2,000 feet in height, the whole utterlydesert. A slight shower of rain falls only once in very many years. Indeed since three-fifths of the constituent parts of guano are soluble in cold water Prof. Johnstone very justly * Besearclies in Geology and Katural History, p. 42S. GUANO. 587 observes that,* * A single day of English rain would dissolve out and carry into the sea aconsiderable portion of one of the largest accumulations ; a single year of English weatherwould cause many of them entirely to disappear Such being the case, we might expect to find similar accumulations in other hot and dryclimates, as in Egypt, and in Africa, e. g., in the neighborhood of the great desert; andonly a few years since a considerable deposit of guano was found in the Kooria MooriaIslands. The export of guano from the Cinc
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1864
