you will not need to pick bones--you will grow bones to pick. It may be
very patriotic to talk about expending the money at home, for bones,
instead of sending it to Peru, for guano; but that talk is all for
Buncombe, there is not a particle of sound reason in it. 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. What would be the effect if a few such farms as
Willoughby Newton's, and Col. Carter's, who each use 30 to 40 tons per
annum of guano, should come all at once into the bone market for their
supplies. In our opinion there would be such a rattling among the dry
bones, we should hear no more about substituting them for guano. The
fact is an incontrovertible one, that nothing on earth nor under the
earth, or in the sea, has ever been discovered, which can be used as a
substitute for guano. Its small bulk is alone sufficient to commend it
to favor.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England offers a prize of L1,000 and
the gold medal of the society, for the discovery of a manure with equal
fertilizing properties to the guano, of which an unlimited supply can be
furnished in England, at L5 per ton.

"_Analogy between Bones and Guano._--There is a striking analogy in
composition between bones and guano, which is, for other reasons
interesting to the practical man.

The following table exhibits the composition of bones compared with
guano, supposing both in the dry state. Bones, as they are applied to to
the land contain about 18 per cent. of water. Ichaboe guano from 20 to
25 per cent.

_Bones._ _Guano._

Organic animal matter, 33 56
Phosphates of lime and magnesia, 59 26
Carbonate of lime, 4 6
Salts of soda, 4 10
Salts of potash, trace trace
Silicious matter 0 2
---- ----
100 100"

And these substances are found in guano