The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-27

from packing works, in the shape of bones
horns, blood, and all manner of corrup-
ton, reduced by dessiccating processes TO
pulverized inoffensiveness.
Elsewhere in Florida great beds are
found of phosphate in different condi-
ton. In the middle of the state, over an
area covering hundreds of square miles,
the soil is underlaid by a stratum as much
as fifteen feet thick in some places, of the
same material in the shape of pebbles
densely strewn in a whitish clayey matrix.
Buried in this layer are discovered great
masses of the remains of huge animals
extinct for ages-particulary sharks which
were doubtless seventy or eighty feet in
length. One gets some notion of the
swarms of these ferocious giants of the
deep that existed in that antediluyian age
from the finding of their great teeth,
each longer than a mans hand, In
the phosphate, as thickly distributed as
plums in a pudding. In the same deposits
are found countless bones of the mastodon,
the megatherium, the elephant, the hog,
the horse, the muskrat, etc. They are i'm
mense graveyards of ages long gone by,
preserving for the contemplation of man
the remains of the mighty beasts and
fishes that roamed the earth and navi-
gated the waters before his time had even
approached. These phosphate land peb-
bles, !" as they are called. are supposed to
have been originally derived from the
rock" deposits, being fragments washed
to their present shape by water, but no
one knows positively.
The nitrates, of which mention has been
made, are obtained largely from Chile,
where the supply is practically controlled
by Colonel North, the nitrate king" who
is such q great friend of the Prince of
Wales. They are simply deposits of
nitrate of soda in the beds of lakes long
dried up, which originally contained in
solution large quantities of that material.
At present 1t Is simply necessary to dig 1t
up, put it through suitable processes, and
ship 1t at so much ton for fertlliZing pur
poses. When a lake receives the flow of
great watershed, and has no outlet save
by evaporation, its water naturally ac-
cumulates and precipitates on the bottom
the chemical elements filtered into it from
the soil around about. Hence the nitrate
deposits referred to.
Bird manure, as has been said, contains
a great percentage of phosphoric acid, and
hence its wonderful value as fertilizer
So well was this appreciated centuries ago
that the lncas of ancient Peru declared
death as the punishment for any one who
killed even one of the birds which depos-
tied guano on the islands off their coasts.
Of late years many of these guano islands
have been stripped of their precious ma
terial, and before long none of it will be
left, although in places it was as much
as 100 feet in depth, being composed
of droppings of fiamingoes, divers, PEN
gums and other sea fowl during countless
generations, together with their carcasses
and the excrement of seals, sea lions and
marine animals of various sorts innum-
cradle.
Many considerable deposits of bat guano
have been found in caves in various parts
of the United States. made up of the drop
pings and bones of these animals, and from
such beds fertilziug supplies have been
extensively drawn, not to mention the use
made of them during the war, as mines
for the production of saltpetre, from which
to manufacture gunpowder.
RENE BACHE