Solon Robinson

“ This is a fallacy which will soon be cured by knowledge, and self-interest is a very strong prompter towards the acquisition of the knowledge, that guano is the best, cheapest, most suitable, convenient and productive manure ever used by a New England farmer, and just as suitable for that climate and soil as it is for Virginia. We assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that there is not a farm—not a field—covered with five-finger vines and mullens, in the State of Massachusetts, which may not be made to produce as profitable crops, by the use of guano, as any Connecticut river farm. ”

“ Dealers, or speculators, if you please, are always censured for raising the price of guano. Is not the same thing done every day, and every hour in the day, by the purchase and sale of flour, wheat, corn, and tobacco—and is not the price of almost every article of commerce regulated in a great degree by the supply and demand? ”

“ A gentleman from Warsaw, Virginia, where the soil is generally a sandy loam, badly worn by long years of bad tillage, says, "My wheat looks finely, especially where I applied guano last fall. I put it in with the seed furrow about three inches deep, and also with double plow six inches deep, harrowing in the wheat frequently side by side. At this time I can see no difference in the wheat crop. I use a large wooden toothed harrow extending over the bed of ten feet, and an even soil, free from stone; they do admirable work and drill the wheat as if put in with the drill." ”

“ Farmers are about the hardest class of men in the world to learn new doctrines; or that science has anything to do with the business of this life, and what all other life in a civilized country is dependent upon. Yet science teaches, by unerring truths, that the plants the farmer cultivates, are composed of carbon, obtained by plants chiefly from the soil and atmosphere; oxygen and hydrogen, obtained by plants chiefly from water, carbonic acid, &c.; nitrogen obtained by plants chiefly from manure, and also from rain and snow ”

“ Those who are interested pecuniarily, which the writer is not, in the increased sale of guano in the United States, have no fears that our recommendations to make manure at home—to use lime, plaster, bones, clover, and every other source of fertility within their reach, will decrease the sale of guano. On the contrary, those who are most disposed to use all these sources of fertility, are the very men most disposed to use a substance which all experience has proved superior to all others. ”

“ Fifty bushels of slaked lime to the acre, I have found amply sufficient for any of our lands, and a greater quantity often attended with injury to the soil and crops, whilst twenty-five bushels will answer every purpose on thin lands, deficient in vegetable matter. Ashes, bone dust, and the various marine manures that abound on the shores of the Chesapeake and its tributaries, will be found important auxiliaries in the work of 'keeping your lands rich,' whilst the necessity of clover and the proper grasses, to any system of permanent improvement, is too obvious to require comment. ”

“ In the first place, we lay it down as an incontrovertible axiom, that the Peruvian guano, at the current price for years of that and all other, is the cheapest and best, because it contains the largest amount of ammonia, in a perfectly dry state; as a carbonate, true, but because dry, it is permanent and not likely to loose by volatilization by long keeping.
If other varieties contain a larger proportion of phosphates, and are sold at a less price, experience proves they are not cheaper. ”

“ With your manure make all your home lots exceedingly rich. With your men and teams clear off stones, dig ditches to put them into, drain your land, or build fence—bring bog meadows and swamps into dry cultivation—send every little brook through artificial channels for irrigation—send water up from lowland springs and streams by hydraulic rams for the same purpose, and for stock on the hills; or bring it down from hillsides if you are so situated; and buy guano for those distant fields, instead of wasting time in the laborious operation of hauling manure. ”

“ Besides the evidence we have given of the value of an application of such a compound, it contains evidence within itself to every mind embued with any knowledge of agricultural chemistry, that it will not only promote immediate growth of vegetation, but produce a lasting benefit to the soil. It contains all the materials necessary for the growth of cereal or esculent vegetation in the exact form required—that is an impalpable powder—to promote rapid, certain, large growth, and abundant fruitfulness, and consequent profit. ”

“ Again; he who raises wheat, corn, or other grains, has an equal inducement to look to it that his manures are abundantly impregnated with these essential elements. Phosphates, so available to the raiser of stock, are equally so to the producer of grain; because the size, richness, and nutritious qualities of the grain depend largely on the presence of these in the soil. A farmer, therefore, has a vital interest in this matter, and should obtain what best suits his purpose. ”

“ The disposition of some men to create prejudice against the government of Peru, or the agents who sell guano in this country, because the price is too high, is a wicked one. Men can make money by purchasing at the present prices; and the owners of the article think they cannot make it by selling at a lower price. We have heard it urged as a reason why it should be sold at lower prices, that the agents and merchants engaged in its sale are making fortunes. So are flour merchants—so are farmers who grow the wheat—but that is no reason why it should be sold lower. ”

“ It is probable those will be disappointed who expect to do everything with guano—make fine crops and improve the land, while they take everything off, and dispense almost, if not entirely, with the more permanent manures, all equally within their reach. True, we may exist for a time, only half fed and half clothed; but it is just as reasonable to expect to improve under such a regimen, as to calculate upon continued, not to say increased fertility of the soil, without an ample supply, of the right kind of manure. ”

“ The wisdom of this law of nature in making the most precious saline manure a fixed and difficultly soluble salt, is at once obvious; for it is thus kept always ready in the soil for the plants to act upon according to their need. If we cut plants down before the seeds form, we have all the phosphates the plants contain diffused throughout them, and if we allow the seed to ripen, the phosphates, as before observed, will be found mostly in the seed. ”

“ Though most valuable on poor sandy or worn out old fields like those of Virginia, already described, still it must not be rejected by the owner of any land which can be improved by manure, because this is a manure of the very best and most concentrated kind; containing more of the ingredients necessary to promote vegetable growth, in the exact proportion and combination, ready prepared for use, than any other substance in the known world. It is a fertilizing substance which none will reject who once learn its value, unless very deeply prejudiced. ”

“ It is idle to talk of bones to restore the waste of phosphates in the soil that is being constantly carried away in grass and grain, beef, pork, mutton, milk and cheese, much of which passes into the sea from the sewers of cities, to be there retained in that great reservoir for the future use of men. ”

“ When the farmer raises crops for sale, and removes his grain and grasses from the land, he sells a portion of his soil; and if he does not renew in some way the saline matters taken away in his crops, he invariably impoverishes his farm. This work of exhaustion is now going on to an alarming extent, and the prolific wheat lands are to be searched for farther and farther westward as the operation proceeds. ”

“ Special manures of any kind may fail to produce crops, where this essential requisite to good farming is neglected. Guano, in our opinion, should always be followed by crops of clover, grass, peas, or some crop that will shade the earth, and can be turned under with the plow, to keep up the necessary supply of nitrogenous food for cereal crops.
The effect of Lime and Salt upon land is to dissolve the inert portions of organic matters in the soil, so that plants can suck up their substance into their own composition. Both are highly beneficial, but insufficient to add permanent fertility. ”

“ Of all manures procurable by the American Farmer, guano from the rainless islands of Peru, is perhaps not only the most concentrated—the most economical to the purchaser—but by its composition, as we will show by analysis, the best adapted to all the crops cultivated in this country requiring manure. For wheat, especially, it is the one thing needful. The mineral constituents of cultivated plants, as will also be shown by analysis, are chiefly lime, magnesia, potash, soda, chlorine, sulphuric and phosphoric acid; all of which will be found in Peruvian guano. ”

“ Happily for mankind in all civilized countries, the discovery of guano has, in a providential manner, met the very wants of the times, in reference to the reinvigoration of certain kinds of soil, since this manure furnishes the elements most needed to supply the waste arising from cultivation, and to develop vegetation. ”

“ If all the bones in the United States could be saved and applied to the land again, we should still fall short of a supply, and be obliged to do as England did before the introduction of guano; go about and ransack grave yards of great battlefields, for more bones. With all the guano imported, or that will be imported, and all the bones that will be saved, there will still be room for more phosphates in the millions of acres of hungry soil in America. ”

“ Every one knows the superiority of wheat grown on newly cultivated lands, and most farmers are aware of the fact that soils become exhausted of something, they know not what, but of something essential to the most favorable production of grain. This something is found in guano, and by it the original fertility of land can be more easily, more certainly and cheaply restored than by any other means as yet discovered. ”

“ If clover can be substituted for pasture in the summer, then the land, if not naturally poor, may be rapidly improved by the use of lime alone, in addition to the putrescent manures that may, by proper care, be made on the farm. On other land of less fertility, and drier, I greatly prefer the five field system, under which, with the use of lime, guano and clover, a rapid improvement may be effected at the same time that heavy crops of wheat are reaped. ”

“ Booth confirms our opinion often expressed, that the poor old barren fields of lower Virginia, are really more valuable than the rich lands of the west; because, owing to facilities of intercourse with commercial cities by water, these lands can be bought, and cultivated by aid of guano, with more profit than the richest prairie farm in Illinois. Mr. Booth's testimony upon the durability of this manure, is enough to contradict all the assertions that "it is of no use for only one crop." ”

“ We never have, nor shall we recommend guano to the exclusion of everything else; but we do recommend every farmer in America, to whom an additional quantity of manure would be an object, to buy guano; because he will be almost sure to derive a certain and immediate profit from the investment. It will make poor lands rich, and rich lands richer. ”

“ It will always pay whenever and wherever applied to any soil in a fit condition to be benefitted by manure. It will make not only the soil rich, but whoever uses it to any considerable extent. It will pay best when used in the condition in which you buy it, with no additional labor or expense except breaking the lumps. If it is sown broadcast, not to exceed 400 lbs. per acre, and plowed in so deep it will not be disturbed by any subsequent cultivation of the crop to which it is applied, it will most certainly pay in that crop or the succeeding one. ”

“ OTHER WITNESSES IN VIRGINIA IN FAVOR OF GUANO.
As our principal object is to convince the skeptical, or induce unbelievers in its efficacy and value, to try experiments themselves by which they will be convinced and enriched, we offer the names of a few more gentlemen of high standing, who have been very fortunate in the use of this essential element of successful cultivation in Virginia, as witnesses, whose testimony ought to be, and will be, where they are known entirely conclusive. ”

“ What the turnip and sheep husbandry have done for the light lands of Great Britain, the general use of guano promises to do for ours. Lands a few years ago deemed entirely incapable of producing wheat, now produce the most luxuriant crops. From 15 to 20 bushels for one sowed, is the ordinary product on our poorest lands, from the application of 200 lbs. of Peruvian guano. I may remark, it is not usual, in Eastern Virginia, to sow more than a bushel of wheat to the acre, and that I deem amply sufficient. ”