"Guano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thirty rusty Irish, playing pitch and toss and waiting for employment;—on along the railway, which came in at the same gates, and which branches down between each vast block—past a pilot-engine butting refractory trucks into their places—on to the last block, [and] down the branch, sniffing the guano-scented air, and detecting the old bones. The hartshorn flavour of the guano becomes very strong, as I near the docks, where, across the Elba's decks, a huge vessel is discharging her cargo of the brown dust, and where huge vessels have been discharging ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out of the taxes which it levies on its people. We know, and every one has for years known, that in India there is a source of revenue, not from taxes levied on the people, but from opium, and which is very like the revenue derived by the Peruvian Government from guano. If we turn to those three years and see what relation the expenditure of the Government had to taxes levied on the people of India, we shall find, though we may hear that the taxes are not so much as we imagine, or that the people are ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... pardon, Sir John, but the spasm took me: it is my infirmity; forgive it. This meadow, you perceive, Sir John, requires drainage, and afterwards I propose to dress it with free chalk to sweeten the grass. Next field, you will take notice, the guano—" ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... interest in them than I did myself. At first, when I was unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going partners with a knavish fellow countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know; but he saw how thick we were getting and found out for me, and that without my asking. Native sailors from the ends of the seas knock ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... I'm going to plough some guano into these acres, even though I can't plough the seas like my worthy grandpap, Sven Thorwald Woden, or whatever his name was. Just look at our wheat, Mother! It isn't fit to feed chickens with because our land ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... passing Pulo Sapata, a bald, solitary rock, standing in the midst of the China Sea, the resort of seafowl, as is indicated by its guano-like appearance. There it stands day after day, and year after year, affronting the scorching beams of this tropical sun. All ships pass by it between Singapore and China. So I am looking at it for the fourth time—the last time, we may hope. We have made fully 200 ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... dynamite is not readily exploded. This was overcome by carrying the sticks inside one's pocket until the last moment. In the absence of earth or clay, we had no tamping material until some one suggested guano from the penguin rookeries, which proved a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the exhibits, to be placed in two neighboring sheds, of the Native Guano Company and the Millowners' Association. The former will show all the patents used for the purification of the rivers from sewage, and the latter will display in action their method of rendering innocuous the chemical pollutions which factories pour ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... take the reward of thy fidelity; for know, Bromley Chitterlings, that I am Eliza Jane. Wearied with waiting, I embarked on a Peruvian guano ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical Kings and Surplices at All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense velocity going. Oliver's works do follow him!—The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities; remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things; and no owl's voice, this way or that, in ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... serious, and not of the modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts; for commerce is really as interesting as nature. The very names of the commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if they had been inserted in a pleasing poem,—Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood. Some sober, private, and original thought would have been grateful to read there, and as much in harmony with the circumstances as if it had been written on a mountain-top; for it is of a fashion which never changes, and as respectable as hides and logwood, or any natural ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... thought or too great admiration. Gardens are filled with beautiful flowers, and fields are fertile to-day because hundreds of years ago sea birds were devouring the carcasses of dead fish, acting as nature's scavengers, and building up the great guano ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... very good years, and when credit is abundant, not so unusual an occurrence as might be supposed, it is just possible for the peasant to struggle on; but he can never be said to live. His land is exhausted by the old Mayo rotation of "potatoes, oats, burn," and he has no manure but guano and seaweed. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... certain required constituents in the soil. Continued vigor is better maintained by wood-ashes perhaps than by any other fertilizer, after the soil is once deepened and enriched, and it may be regarded as one of the very best tonics for the strawberry plant. Bone-meal is almost equally good. Guano and kindred fertilizers are too stimulating, and have ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... in the hold gave out, and in consequence the meat was in no fit state to eat. Every body and every thing seemed uncomfortable. It was a great change from the clean and pleasant Golden Age. We saw the islands of San Domingo, Narvasa, Jamaica, Cuba, Santa Inagua, and Mayo Guano, ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... (Celtic) Samovar (Russian) Polka (Polish) Chess (Persian) Shekel (Hebrew) Tea (Chinese) Algebra (Arabic) Kimono (Japanese) Puttee (Hindoo) Tattoo (Tahitian) Boomerang (Australian) Voodoo (African) Potato (Haytian) Skunk (American Indian) Guano (Peruvian) Buncombe (American) ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... favorite place for them, and often three hundred are taken at a single haul in the powerful nets. Here and in most of the northern localities the entire body is utilized,—the carcass being used in the manufacture of guano. So perfectly are the bodies preserved by the cold of these northern regions that if they cannot be removed at the time of capture they are secured in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... saw a heavier lot of wheat, Thorne, than you've got there in the field beyond the copse. I suppose that's guano,' ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own words—anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had discovered—so he said—a guano island somewhere, but its approaches were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be considered safe, to say the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he would exclaim. "Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it's true enough that you can get no holding-ground ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and made valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, watching the steady stream of bilge as though he found some interest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expenditure in bone manure. Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative independence.[622] A very large quantity of the bones used came from South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'. Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... remains of fish brought to feed the young, a deposit is made over the whole surface, a fraction of an inch every year, which by degrees increases until it is sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep, if not more, and the lower portion becomes almost as hard as rock. The deposit is termed guano, and has, from time immemorial, been used by the Peruvians and Chilians as manure for the land; it is very powerful, as it contains most of the essential salts, such as ammonia, phosphates, etcetera, which are required for agriculture. Within these last few years samples ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... acquainted with the different kinds of manures, and made large use of them; a circumstance rare in the rich lands of the tropics, and probably not elsewhere practised by the rude tribes of America. They made great use of guano, the valuable deposit of sea-fowl, that has attracted so much attention, of late, from the agriculturists both of Europe and of our own country, and the stimulating and nutritious properties of which the Indians perfectly appreciated. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... strong poles of bamboo, often more than a hundred feet in height. The nests are swept from the rock with a pole terminating in a small iron spatula, and carrying near the extremity a wax candle; falling to the ground, which is floored with guano several feet thick, they are gathered up in baskets. The white nests are gathered three times in the year at intervals of about a month, the black nests usually only twice; as many as three tons of black nests are sometimes taken ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... accorded a visitor to out-of-the-world places. He corroborated all that my Indian sailors had claimed for the rabihorcado, and added the interesting information that lighthouse-keepers desired the extinction of the birds because the guano, deposited by them on the roofs of the keepers' houses, poisoned the rain water—all ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... some of the guano from the place where the penguins make their nests would be fine stuff to manure our garden with before we put in ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... be one principle of law better settled than another (and probably it was as clearly set forth in the Revised Statutes of Venice as is set forth in our own common law), it is that a party entitled to the possession of a commodity, whether grain, guano, dead or live men's flesh, bones and sinews, is entitled, also, to pursue the usual necessary and appropriate means of obtaining the possession of the same. I appeal to Colonel W—— if this be not good law, and asking whether, if he be entitled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... won't permit vegetable growth? A liberal amount of stable manure has been applied, and the land deeply plowed, harrowed and cultivated, but as soon as water gets on it, it forms a deep crust on evaporation. Will guano help, or is sodium nitrate or ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... when the earth is discharged, and the evacuation is covered, all offensive exhalation entirely ceases. Under certain circumstances, there may be, at times, a slight odor as of guano mixed with earth; but this is so trifling and so local, that a commode arranged on this plan may, without the least annoyance, be kept in use in ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... incurred the dislike of his native subjects by establishing a poi-factory of his own near Honolulu. Poi is sold in the streets in calabashes, but it is also shipped in considerable quantities to other islands, and especially to guano islands which lie southward and westward of this group. On these lonely islets, many of which have not even drinking-water for the laborers who live on them, poi and fish are the chief if not the only articles of food. The fish, of course, are caught on the spot, but poi, water, salt, and ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... old. A dreadful mustiness pervaded the atmosphere. The dirt, too, the heavy deposit of guano upon the floor, made it almost revolting. There was no furniture of any sort, while yet it conveyed the suggestion that, at some remote period, it had ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my appearance at the breakfast-table to-morrow, and for days after, will be hideous; to say nothing of personal discomfort and fever. Now, a mosquito net stretched ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... years later when vast quantities of menhaden were converted into guano for crops by Atlantic coast factories, a practice changed only when livestock-nutrition studies showed that menhaden scrap was too valuable a protein source to be spread on land. The fish referred to by Washington were in all probability river-herring, or alewives, ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the barque "Tropic," loaded with guano, bound for Cork, in Ireland. This vessel was a very rotten old thing, and in getting round Cape Horn we all had a very hard time, and did not know how soon the vessel would sink with us; but we got round the Cape and into the South Atlantic, where we ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... albuminoids were employed, the formation of ammonia preceded the production of nitric acid. Mr. C.F.A. Tuxen has already published in the present year two series of experiments on the formation of ammonia and nitric acids in soils to which bone-meal, fish-guano, or stable manure had been applied; in all cases he found the formation of ammonia preceded ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... fertilisers of the soil; but the three principles which constitute their manurial value—namely, nitrogen (ammonia), phosphoric acid, and potash—are purchasable at far lower prices in guano and other manures. Nevertheless, many farmers believe that the most economical way to produce good manure is to feed their stock with concentrated aliment, in order to greatly increase the value of their excreta. They consider that a pound's worth of oil-cake, or of corn, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... foot of raked-up leaves and rich earth was placed under the perches of the fowls. Every two or three weeks this layer was shovelled out and mixed thoroughly, and was replaced by a new layer. As a result I had, by the 1st of August, a large heap of fertilizer almost as good as guano, and much safer to use, for I had read that unless the latter was carefully managed it would burn vegetation like fire. I believe that this compost-heap by the poultry-room window would give my young strawberry plantation a fine start, and, as has been shown, we were making great calculations ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... I was told it paid L2 per acre. I wonder how it is possible to raise rent and taxes off these fields, never to mention support for the farmers. The land requires very stimulating manure to produce a crop. When bad years come, and render the tenant farmers unable to purchase guano, the crops are worthless almost. The necessity of buying artificial manure is a terrible necessity that ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... remained neutral. The Chilians captured (Oct. 8, 1879) the Peruvian iron-clad vessel, the Huascar. They gained other advantages, and took possession of the whole province, with its deposits of nitrate and guano. Revolutions ensued in Bolivia and Peru. Chilians took Lima, the Peruvian capital, and overran the country. Terms of peace proposed by Chili, involving large cessions of territory, were ratified by the Congress at Lima (March 1, 1884). A treaty of peace ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Negroes have been murdered in the South since your Civil War and I know of just one hanging of a white as a result. Again, the worst houses to live in are assigned to your people; the lower forms of labor, involving the most exposure and danger to life, are reserved for your folks. Phosphate mines and guano factories shorten human life wofully and your people are sought for these 'life shortening' jobs. Mark my words," said Mr. Hostility, rising and bending across the table, "when the Anglo-Saxon feels the need of it, he is going to exterminate you folks. Theories to the wind! When ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... campaign as was freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now there is one place in the world—and so far as we know one only—where nitrates are to be found abundantly. This is in a desert on the western slope of the Andes where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and there was not enough rain to wash away their salts. Here is a bed two miles wide, two hundred miles long and five feet deep yielding some twenty to fifty per cent. of sodium ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... of Beata Island, is a huge bell-shaped mass of rock, 500 feet in height, almost two miles in length and a mile in width. It reminded Columbus of a giant ship under full sail, wherefore he named it Alta Vela, or High Sail, sometimes corrupted to Alto Velo. The valuable deposits of guano on the rock induced a party of Americans in 1860 to take possession of it in the name of the United States as an ownerless guano island, but upon protest by the Dominican authorities the American government promptly ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your body and mine—for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat. And therefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory. We must put into it every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything and everything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into grass, and cook the grass again into milk and meat. But if we don't give Madam How material to work on, we cannot ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... the ship's hold, just as it was cut from the carcass, and so brought back weeks later to the home port—a shipload of malodorous putrefaction. Old sailors who have cruised with cargoes of cattle, of green hides, and of guano, say that nothing that ever offended the olfactories of man equals the stench of a right-whaler on her homeward voyage. Scarcely even could the slave-ships compare with it. Brought ashore, this noisome mass ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... and the luxuriance of vegetation furnishes itself, by decomposition, abundant materials for replenishing the fertility of the soil. But there are some substances, such as muriate of soda, gypsum, phosphate, and other compounds of lime, which may be advantageously applied. Guano and expensive artificial manures, are seldom required, and, indeed, will not repay the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... exclaimed Mr. Piper, with a hazy idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. 'Don't you take and put any rubbish in the garden. I've got a new lot of guano, and I don't want ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... claim, under the act of Congress of August 18, 1856, of citizens of the United States to guano on Alta Vela, an island in the vicinity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... bethought himself of the eagle's nest. It was a terrible climb, before he lay on a ledge peering ever into the guano-stained structure of sticks from which the eagle soared again at his approach. As he looked, he laughed. The forequarters of a mountain goat lay in the nest. Hanging perilously by one hand, Enoch grasped the long, bloody hair and then, rolling back on to the ledge, he stuffed his loot into ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... on the rocks, perhaps with a burning sun making them almost too hot to hold, will bring you within reach of a Shag's nest; but I would not advise any one who tries it to put on his "go-to-meeting clothes," as the deposit of guano on the rocks will spoil anything; and only let him smell his hands after his exploit—they do smell so nice! One of the parents generally stands by the young after they are hatched, I suppose to prevent them from wandering about and falling off the rocks, as ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... forget yourself. Besides, I didn't use a match. I kindled it by rubbing two sticks together. Same as they do in Guano, where the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... francs. I sold in 1884, to the Prussian government, an iron-clad and two steam corvettes for seven million five hundred thousand francs, and received five per cent, commission." Then he professed to have had gigantic contracts in Chili, Peru and other parts of South America for artillery and guano. Altogether his story was ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... said the Captain, after appealing to Mary O'Dwyer and Hyacinth, 'it can't be helped, but I must say I should like to meet someone who had read "The Rock of Horeb." I once sailed from Peru in an exceedingly ill-found little barque loaded with guano. We had a very dull time going through the tropics, and absolutely the only thing to read on board was the first half of "The Rook of Horeb." There were at least two pages missing. I read it until I nearly knew it off by heart, and ever since I've been trying to get a complete ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... partly manufactured material, including prepared tallow, meat extracts, meat, butter, cheese, lard, dressed leather, etc., represented L2,454,760, whilst the by-products, including bones, dried blood, guano, waste fats, etc., were valued at L430,734. Thus, Argentina's total export from the cattle industry (after supplying her own needs) ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... days to ferment. When ready for use it is either lilac or pink, and tastes like sour bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when it is in its dry state, it is called paiai, or hard food, and is then packed in ti leaves in 20 lb. bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the Guano Islands. It is a prolific and nutritious plant. It is estimated that forty square feet will support an ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Necker Island. Birds, especially the white tern, had been seen in numbers prior to its announcement. Necker Island is apparently a mass of volcanic rocks, about three hundred feet high, and is destitute of any kind of vegetation, but covered with guano. It is surrounded by a reef, three miles from which soundings were obtained, in twenty fathoms water. The furious surf that was beating on all sides of the island, precluded all possibility of a landing being made. By the connected observations ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Looking after the land is the best of trades. Everything must have begun with it, and it will go on for ever. And the pleasure of thinking one can improve, and hand it over richer and better for the expenditure of a little brains upon it, as well as other condiments—" she said, with a laugh. "Guano, you will say, is of more use perhaps ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the West Indian group, has, under the provisions of Title VII of the Revised Statutes, been recognized by the President as appertaining to the United States. It contains guano deposits, is owned by the Navassa Phosphate Company, and is occupied solely its employees. In September, 1889, a revolt took place among these laborers, resulting in the killing of some of the agents of the company, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lens, is found to consist of numerous exceedingly thin layers, its total thickness being about the tenth of an inch. It contains much animal matter, and its origin, no doubt, is due to the action of the rain or spray on the birds' dung. Below some small masses of guano at Ascension, and on the Abrolhos Islets, I found certain stalactitic branching bodies, formed apparently in the same manner as the thin white coating on these rocks. The branching bodies so closely resembled in general appearance certain ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... caves, about 1,000 metres long, 400 broad, and 100 high, with perpendicular walls. The caves are finely formed and have dome-shaped roofs, but few stalactite formations appear. Thousands of bats live there and the ground is covered with a thick layer of guano. From the viewpoint of natural beauty these caves are far inferior to the well-known cave of Kimanis in the Birang (on the River Berau, below the Kayan) with its extraordinarily beautiful stalactite formations. In one of the caves with a low ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the former "dunce," the one they had called "Good-luck" because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe scarfpin in his necktie. One would say that he was a horse-jockey ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... milled dollars. He has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... immediately after anchoring. The island is one and a half miles in length, by one in greatest breadth. The rock is a coarse sienite, forming detached bare masses and ridges, but none of considerable height. In the hollows the soil appears rich, dark, and pulverulent, with much admixture of unformed bird-guano. The scanty vegetation is apparently limited to a grass growing in tussocks, and a few maritime plants. The ground resembles a rabbit warren, being everywhere undermined by the burrows of the mutton-bird, a dark shearwater (Puffinus brevicaudus) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... much less pleasant business than residence among the gentle brown folk of the Eastern Pacific) made him leave and return to the Marshall Islands, where Lailik, the chief whom he had succoured at sea years before, made him welcome. He left on a fruitless quest after an imaginary guano island, and from then until two years ago he has been living on various islands in both the North and South Pacific, leading what he calls "a wandering and lonely but not unhappy existence," "Lui," as they ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... growth. It is on the border of the small lake—where the Indians never go, through fear of the caymans—that almost all the aquatic birds of the grand lake resort to lay their eggs. Every tree, white with the guano which they deposit there, is covered with birds'-nests, full of eggs and birds of every ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... and the priesthood, and the third to the people. The cultivation of the land was supervised by a commissioner of the government, who had to see that the produce was equitably distributed, and that the ground was properly manured with guano from the islands on the west coast. Clothes and domestic animals were also distributed by the State to the people. All labour was executed in common for the good of the State; roads and bridges were ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... roots, distant columns of smoke where steam-engines are tearing up the soil. All the while a scientific disquisition on ammonia and the constituent parts and probable value of town sewage as compared with guano. And at intervals, and at parting, a pressing invitation to dinner [when pineapples or hot-house grapes are certain to make their appearance at dessert]—such a flow of genial eloquence surely ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... it in small quantities, but applying it at different stages in the growth of the plant. It is scarcely necessary to say that Bob had fallen on a knowledge of the use of the article which is now so extensively known under the name of guano, in the course of his wanderings, and was enabled to communicate the fact to his companion. Mark knew that Betts was a man of severe truth, and he was so much the more disposed to listen to his suggestion. While our young mate was getting ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... cactus capable of being 'seeded' after the second year; if poor, a third is required. The plant lasts, with manure to defend it from exhaustion, a full decade. [Footnote: The compost was formerly natural, dry or liquid as in Switzerland; but for some years the costly guano and chemicals have been introduced. Formerly also potatoes were set between the stems; and well-watered lands gave an annual grain-crop as well ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... public works. All accounts of the country at the time of the Conquest agree in the statement that they cultivated the soil in a very admirable way and with remarkable success, using aqueducts for irrigation, and employing guano as one of their most important fertilizers. Europeans learned from them the value of this fertilizer, and its name, guano, is Peruvian. The remains of their works show what they were as builders. Their skill ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... of man, of the piscivorous birds (as the guano), of the horse, and of cattle, furnishes us with the precise knowledge of the salts they contain, and demonstrates, that in those excrements, we return to the fields the ashes of the plants which have served as food,—the soluble and insoluble salts and earths indispensable to ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... union. The Duke, who had been so good-natured as a lover, proved stupid and somewhat tiresome as a husband. He gave his mind to hunting and farming, and cared for nothing else. His chief conversation was about cattle and manure, guano and composts, the famous white Chillingham oxen, or the last thing in strawberry roans. He spent a small fortune that would have been large for a small man—in the attempt to acclimatise strange animals in his park in the Midlands. Sophia, Duchess ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... from pyridine, we have here a true synthesis also. Both theobromine and caffeine, its methyl derivative, have been made from xanthine, which itself can be formed from guanine, a constituent of guano. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... kindly slope from the rear of the house to a little brook, which, passing to the calm Concord beyond, washes the edge of his land, yields him at least occasional beans and pease—or some friend, agriculturally enthusiastic and an original Brook-Farmer, experiments with guano in the garden, and produces melons and other vines with a success that relieves Brook Farm from every slur of inadequate practical genius. Mr. Emerson has shaded his originally bare land with trees, and counts near a hundred apple ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... paper bags, examples of which are seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The bags were being made at the time of our visit, from old newspapers cut, folded and pasted by women. Naked cultivation was practiced in the orchard, and fertilizers consisting of fish guano and superphosphate of lime were being applied twice each year in amounts aggregating a cost of ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... hour he was back there with a great pot, and half filled it. It was not like water, it did not bubble so high when some had been taken; so he just took what he could get. Pursuing his researches a little further he found a range of rocks with snowy summits apparently; but the snow was the guano of centuries. He got to the western extremity of the island, saw another deep bay or rather branch of the sea, and on the other side of it a tongue of high land running out to sea. On that promontory stood a gigantic palmtree. He recognized that with a certain thrill, but was in a great hurry to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... established a dancing institution and Terpsichorean Athenaeum. Of late, Jack has found a good friend in animal magnetism, and his seances have been reasonably successful. When performing in the country districts, Jack varied the entertainments by a lecture on the properties of guano, which he threw in for nothing, and which was highly appreciated by the agricultural interest. Jack's books were principally works of travel. His Journey to the Fountains of the Niger is generally esteemed highly amusing, if not instructive: it was knocked off at ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada; about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night. These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. It is a pity the author ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... an order, seeing in him the son of the ship-owner. At this rate he would never have become a real sailor, rugged and expert. With the tenacious energy of his race he had taken passage unknown to his father on a frigate bound for the Chinchas Islands for a cargo of guano, manned by a crew of many races—deserters from the English navy, bargemen from Valparaiso, Peruvian Indians, black sheep of every family, all under command of a Catalonian, a niggardly ruffian, more prodigal with blows than with the mess. The outbound ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... levels to the feet of those hills, and when it recedes it leaves the cornfields enriched for the crop that, has never failed since the forests were first cut from the land. Other fertilizing the fields have never had any, but they teem as if the guano islands had been emptied into their laps. They feel themselves so rich that they part with great lengths and breadths of their soil to the river, which is not good for the river, and is not well for the fields; so that the farmers, whose ease learns slowly, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... night soil, among domestic manures, are the excrements of poultry, pigeons, etc. Birds live on the nice bits of creation, seeds, insects, etc., and they discharge their solid and liquid excrements together. Poultry-dung is nearly equal in value to guano (except that it contains more water), and it deserves to be carefully preserved and judiciously used. It is as well worth twenty-five cents per bushel as guano is worth fifty dollars a ton (at which price it is ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... the action of ammonia on alloxan, which is itself derived from the uric acid of guano by treatment with nitric acid, and was known nearly forty years back to stain the fingers and nails red. The first murexide sent into the market was a reddish-purple powder, dissolving in water with a fine ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... at the Chincha Islands, took in a cargo of guano for China, and shaped their course then eastward across the calm southern ocean, whose lonely monotony was only broken by the occasional appearance of one of the larger kind of sea-birds, or by the distant spouting of a whale. On board, however, the same peace was ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... an island," said Will quietly, as the boys watched a cloud of gulls that had been disturbed by their approach, and new screaming and uttering peevish querulous cries above their heads. The top of the rock, which was sixty or seventy feet above the water, was quite white with guano, and every ledge of the perpendicular mass seemed to be the home of the sea-birds which had been perched there in rows, looking almost like pigeons till the near approach of the boat had sent ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Lord James held his glasses fixed on the barren guano- whitened ledges of the headland. But though he could discern with quickly increasing distinctness the seabirds that soared about the cliff crest and nested in its crevices, he perceived no sign of any signal such as castaways might be expected ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... itself. In one place we were splashed by the spray from quite a large waterfall, and one realised that the summer sun, beating down on those black foothills, must be melting enormous quantities of ice and snow. A curious ozone smell, which must have been the stench of the guano from the penguin rookeries, was noticed, but land smells of any sort were pleasant enough now for it brought home to us the fact that we should shortly embark on yet ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... experience of the last few years has taught us one thing more certainly than another, it is the unfailing excellence of Guano for every kind ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... superficial knowledge of the commercial products of the whale, one must learn of baleen, of whale-oils and spermaceti, of ambergris, whale-guano, whale-ivory, and whale-leather. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... arrangement of the devices, slide, G, and roller, D, as connected and operating together, with the crank, F, so as to drop the guano and corn through a single spout, to prevent choking, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... has faded into insignificance before the necessity of raising cotton. The result on the fertility of the soil is also evident. Luckily cotton makes light demands on the land, but the thin soil of many districts has been unable to stand even the light demands. Guano came just in time and the later commercial fertilizers have postponed the evil day. The development of the cotton mills has also served to give a local market, which has stimulated the production of cotton. It seems rather evident, however, ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... stranger under my guns, I began to feel sure of him (our smoke stack was down, and we could not have raised steam in less than two hours and a half). He proved to be the ship Vigilant, of Bath, Maine, bound from New York to the guano island of Sombrero, in ballast. Captured him. Took from on board chronometer, charts, &c., and a nine pounder rifled gun, with ammunition, &c. Set him on fire, and at 3 P.M. made sail. This was a fine new ship, being only two years old, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... good, it would soon have been an easy matter to procure any amount of manure by a corresponding number of cattle; but, as it happened, the natural pasturage was so bad that no beast could thrive upon it. Thus everything, even grass-land, had to be manured; and, fortunately, a cargo of guano having arrived in the island, we were enabled to lay down some good clover ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of the island in 1857, and its guano deposits were mined by US and British companies during the second half of the 19th century. In 1935, a short-lived attempt at colonization was begun on this island - as well as on nearby Howland Island - but ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... David Forbes, the Peruvians believed that syphilis arose from connection of man and alpaca; and an old law forbade bachelors to keep these animals in the house. Francks explains by the introduction of syphilis wooden figures found in the Chinchas guano; these represented men with a cord round the neck or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... contract was up, Ah Chun invested his savings in a small importing store, going into partnership with one, Ah Yung. The firm ultimately became the great one of "Ah Chun and Ah Yung," which handled anything from India silks and ginseng to guano islands and blackbird brigs. In the meantime, Ah Chun hired out as cook. He was a good cook, and in three years he was the highest-paid chef in Honolulu. His career was assured, and he was a fool to abandon it, as Dantin, his employer, told him; but Ah Chun knew his ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... that, a few years ago, a great excitement was caused by the discovery of vast deposits of guano upon the island of Ichaboe, situated on the west coast of Africa. The remarkable fertilising qualities of guano gave it great value as an article of commerce, and a large number of vessels were despatched from various ports to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... upon it. The outlay for oil-cake and corn purchased for feeding, amounts to about 4,000 pounds per annum. Another heavy expenditure is about 1,700 pounds yearly for artificial fertilisers, consisting of guano and blood-manure. Mr. Jonas is one of the directors of the company formed for the manufacture of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... morning, till her avocations drove it out of her mind. She was busy, trying hard to get her own way with her bailiff as to the crops, when she was interrupted by tidings that Mr. Fulmort was in the drawing-room; and concluding it to be Robert, she did not hurry her argument upon guano. On entering the room, however, she was amazed at beholding not Robert, but his brother, cast down in an armchair, and looking ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exploitation exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: none Climate: equatorial; scant rainfall, constant wind, burning sun Terrain: low, nearly level coral island surrounded by a narrow fringing reef Natural resources: guano (deposits worked until 1891) Land use: arable land: 0% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 0% other: 100% Irrigated land: 0 km2 Environment: treeless, sparse, and scattered vegetation consisting of grasses, prostrate vines, and low growing shrubs; ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... American flag waved over more than ships and a portion of the Pacific coast. Naval officers more than once raised it over islands which they christened, and Congress authorized the President to exercise temporary authority over islands from which American citizens were removing guano and to prevent foreign encroachment while they were so engaged. In the eighties, fifty such islands of the Pacific were in the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... but Emerson that responds to me with a voice wholly human!" All "Literature" too is become I cannot tell you how contemptible to me. On the whole, one's blessedness is to do as Oliver: Work while the sun is up; work well as if Eternities depended on it; and then sleep,—if under the guano-mountains of Human Stupor, if handsomely forgotten all at once, that latter is the handsome thing! I have often thought what W. Shakespeare would say, were he to sit one night in a "Shakespeare Society," and listen to the empty twaddle and other long-eared melody about him there!—Adieu, my ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... frontier between Chile and Bolivia crossed the Atacama desert at 24 deg. South Latitude; but the zone between 23 deg. and 25 deg. was left under the common jurisdiction of the two states, for exploitation of the guano deposits and mineral wealth.[362] A common border district on a much larger scale is found between Brazil and the eastern frontier of French Guiana. It includes a belt 185 miles (300 kilometers) wide between the Oyapok and Arawary rivers, and is left as a neutral ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... not transitory in its effects; the land remembers the generous treatment for many years, and if at times lime or ashes be added to assist decomposition, will continue to yield remunerative crops long after land but once treated with stable manure or guano fails to produce any thing but weeds. The skinning process, the taking off of every thing grown on the soil and returning nothing to it, is ruinous alike to farm and farmer. Thousands of acres can be found in various parts of the country too ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... a young volunteer on board, who had figured at Brighton reviews, and was now on his way to join his father in New Zealand, where he proposed to join the colonial army. We had also a Yankee gentleman, about to enter on his governorship of the Guano Island of Maldon, in the Pacific, situated almost due north of the Society Islands, said to have been ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... me, weighed my plans, and took a greater interest in them than I did myself. At first, when I was unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going partners with a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know, but he saw how thick we were getting, and found out for me, and without my asking him. Native sailors from the ends of the seas knock about on the beach in Tahiti; and Otoo, suspicious ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... felt that the world could give him no delight so great as to have her beside him, and her as his own. But the inky devil sat close upon his shoulders. Where would he be at the end of three months if Mr. Wharton would do nothing for him,—and if a certain venture in guano, to which he had tempted Sexty Parker, should not turn out the right way? He believed in the guano and he believed in Mr. Wharton, but it is a terrible thing to have one's whole position in the world hanging upon either an unwilling father-in-law or a probable ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... round the Horn to the West Coast in those days would take a charter on the Gulf Stream to clean them well, on account of carrying guano. The Helen Mar carried no guano, and charged freightage accordingly for being clean. Drygoods she'd brought out from New York, linens, cottons, tinware, shoes, and an outfit of furniture for a Chilian millionaire's house, including ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat Minnie, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water tank, and were in for repairs ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... a constant and integral element, either forming part of its structure, or one of the conditions of vital processes, that and that only deserves the name of aliment. I see no reason, therefore, why iron, phosphate of lime, sulphur, should not be considered food for man, as much as guano or poudrette for vegetables. Whether one or another of them is best in any given case,—whether they shall be taken alone or in combination, in large or small quantities, are separate questions. But they are elements belonging ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a list of exhibits, showing the principal industries the country, as displayed throughout the building: Marble, canned goods, furs, coal, oils, guano, vegetables and fruit, Indian basketry and curios, and mounted specimens of game ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... uncertain. But one cannot visit a new country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and the experience of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of the precious metals are, under our present conditions, no more an abiding source of wealth than is a guano island, they may immensely accelerate the development of a country, giving it a start in the world, and providing it with advantages, such as railway communication, which could not otherwise be looked for. This they are now doing for Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... "Yes. That guano which I got from Walker is adulterated. I have analyzed it, and find that it does not contain above thirty-two and a half hundredths of—of that which it ought to hold in a proportion of seventy-five per ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... generation, and to summon a civilized world to the worship of righteousness and truth! Is this a Guinea trader or a prophet who is angry when Quashee prefers his pumpkins and millet, reared without the hot guano of the lash, and who will not accept the reduction of a bale of cotton or a tierce of sugar, though Church and State be disinfected of slavery?[E] It is a drop of planter's gall which the sham-hater shakes testily from his corroded pen. How far the effluvia of the slave-ship will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Guano, different varieties of ... Average composition of ... Division into Ammoniacal and Phosphatic ... Characters of ... Adulteration of ... Application of ... Pigeons' Dung ... Urate and Sulphated Urine ... Night-Soil and Poudrette ... Hair, Skin, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... allow us, or I verily believe we might have killed tons of birds between Cape Walker and Cape York, principally little auks (Alca alle);—they actually blackened the edge of the floe for miles. I had seen, on the coast of Peru, near the great Guano mines, what I thought was an inconceivable number of birds congregated together; but they were as nothing compared with the myriads that we disturbed in our passage, and their stupid tameness would have enabled us to kill as ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... mixtures contain the three important plant foods, nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, they are sometimes called "complete" manures or fertilizers. In some parts of the country all commercial fertilizers are called "guano." ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... towers—a great institution in Central Persia. They are cylindrical in shape, with castellated top, and are solidly built with massive walls. They stand no less than thirty to forty feet in height, and possess a central well in which the guano is collected—the object for which the towers are erected. A quadrangular house on the top, and innumerable small cells, where pigeons lay their eggs and breed their young, are constructed all round the tower. These towers are quite formidable ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... thoroughly cultivated, but clean, and free from weed-seed. The difference between a very good profit and a loss on the crop depends much upon the use of land and manures perfectly free from foul seeds of any kind. Ashes, guano, seaweed, ground bones, and other similar substances, or thoroughly-rotted and fermented ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... November a small island, or rather rock, some five hundred fathoms long, upon which not a single tree grew, and which was thickly covered with guano, was discovered. It was named Necker Island, and is in 166 degrees 52 minutes long. W. of Paris, and 23 degrees ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... waggons Cedar, gigantic Cockroaches, to kill Cycas revoluta, by Mr. Ruppen Drainage bill, London Forests, royal Fruits, wearing out of —— disease in stone, by M. Ysabeau Fumigator, Geach's, by Mr. Forsyth Guano, new source of Honey, thin Horticultural Society Horticultural Society's garden Machine tools Manures, concentrated —— liquid, by Mr. Bardwell Marvel of Peru Mechi's (Mr.) gathering Mirabilis Jalapa New Forest Plant, hybrid Potatoes, Bahama Potato disease —— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... and explored. We found articles of heavier hardware scattered and piled about, some sacks of guano, and about a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Penguin Island are in the bay; Ichaboe, Mercury, and Hollam's Bird islands are to the north; Halifax, Long, Possession, Albatross, Pomona, Plumpudding, and Roastbeef islands are to the south. On these islands are guano deposits; the most valuable is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... rock, and there was no beach nor landing place, the sea washing its sides with deep water. It was, as I afterwards discovered, one of the group of islands to which the Peruvians despatch vessels every year to collect the guano, or refuse of the sea birds which resort to the islands; but the one on which we were was small, and detached some distance from the others, on which the guano was found in great profusion; so that hitherto it had been neglected, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... announced that they will give 'L.1000 and a gold medal for the discovery of a manure equal in fertilising properties to the Peruvian guano, and of which an unlimited supply can be furnished to the English farmer at a rate not exceeding L.5 per ton.' Also, 'fifty sovereigns for the best account of the geographical distribution of guano, with suggestions for the discovery of any new ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... weather and radio station on Ile Glorieuse. Juan de Nova Island: Named after a famous 15th century Spanish navigator and explorer, the island has been a French possession since 1897. It has been exploited for its guano and phosphate. Presently a small military garrison oversees a meteorological station. Tromelin Island: First explored by the French in 1776, the island came under the jurisdiction of Reunion in 1814. At present, it serves as a sea turtle sanctuary ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... protects the place. It is in the territory of the Warsingali, and owns the rule of the Gerad or Prince, who sometimes lives here, and at other times inhabits the Jungle. Las Kuray exports gums, Dumbah sheep, and guano, the latter considered valuable, and sent to Makalla in Arabia, to manure ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... have made them their abode. Strange as it may seem, they are of more intrinsic value than the richest mines of Potosi; yet their produce is all on the surface, and to be obtained but with little labour. They are the three Chincha Islands, and their produce is guano. It is the result of the droppings of birds, which in that dry and rainless region has preserved all its fertilising qualities, and has been stored up, by the decree of a beneficent Providence, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... difference in taste. One people will regard as a luxury a viand or condiment which is repugnant to another. Locusts have been used from time immemorial for food by different tribes of Arabs. Snail soup was once regarded in Europe as a delicious dish. In the West Indies and South America the guano, a species of lizard, is devoured with gusto. Bird's nests command enormous prices as an edible in China, where also dogs and cats are ordinary food. At Rome camels' heels were a tidbit for an epicure. Whale's tongues ranked among the delicacies ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... sons continued has been acquisition, expansion, annexation, reaching out to remote wildernesses far more distant and inaccessible then than the Philippines are now—to disconnected regions like Alaska, to island regions like Midway, the Guano Islands, the Aleutians, the Sandwich Islands, and even to quasi-protectorates like Liberia and Samoa. Why mourn because of the precedent we are establishing? The precedent was established before we were born. Why distress ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... permitted, the second stripping of feathers and the rebuilt nest being left undisturbed. The caverns are lined with a white guano, now some feet thick, since it has ceased to be sought for manure; the Martialists having discovered means of saturating the soil with ammonia procured from the nitrogen of the atmosphere, which with the sewage and other similar materials enables them to dispense with this valuable ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... metals of the alkalies. Ammonium occurs in nature as chloride in sal ammoniac (AmCl), as sulphate in mascagnine (Am{2}SO{4}), as phosphate in struvite (AmMgPO{4}.12H{2}O). Minerals containing ammonium are rare, and are chiefly found either in volcanic districts or associated with guano. Ammonia and ammonium sulphide occur in the waters of certain Tuscan lagoons, which are largely worked for the boracic acid they contain. The crude boracic acid from this source contains from 5 to 10 per cent. of ammonium ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... is called "high farming," and spent enormous sums in fertilizing the soil. For a mere top-dressing of guano, bones, nitrate of soda, or sulphate of ammonia, he spent one spring eight thousand dollars. These large expenditures, directed as they were by a man who thoroughly understood his business, produced wonderful results. He gained a large fortune, and his farm became so celebrated, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... regard the evidence as a whole, the object being—as the object of all honest historical inquiry must be—to ascertain the truth about it, freed from those jealousies and prejudices which, so freely deposited at the time, tend to consolidate and petrify until, as with the guano massed hard on islets in Australasian seas, it is difficult to get at the solid rock beneath for the accretions upon it, and sometimes not easy to discriminate rock ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... your great-grandmother's shin-bone?' and that would have seemed reasonable. But now, to see how things are altered, any man of sense would reply, 'What should he want with my great-grandmother's shin-bone? Why, he'll grind it, and then he'll mix it with guano.' This is what he and the like of him have actually done by shiploads of people far more entitled to consideration than any one of my four great-grandmothers (for I had four, with eight shin-bones amongst them). It is well known that the field of Waterloo was made to render up all ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Modern agricultural chemistry has contradicted this judgment of Cassius, for the manure of sea birds, especially that brought from the South American islands in the Pacific, known commercially as Peruvian guano, is found on analysis to be high in the elements which are most beneficial ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... know about Chili is not its guano beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Darwin saw a town there so completely buried in a wood of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... necessity of getting down to the clear pavements and old veracities; who tremble before no amount of pedant exuviae, no loudest shrieking of doleful creatures; who tremble only to live, themselves, like inane phantasms, and to leave their life as a paltry contribution to the guano mountains, and not as a ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... know about Chili is, not its guano beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Darwin saw a town there so completely buried in a wood of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an orchard. The tree, indeed, thrives so well, that large branches cut off in the spring ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... In England, in spite of all we have done to stimulate it of late years with guano and other artificial manures, it is ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... margin. Rachel sat down upon it, her eyes upon that distant gleam below. The dusk was fast possessing itself of all the farm, and an evening wind was gustily blowing through the cart-shed, playing with some old guano sacks that had been left there, and whistling round the corners of the house. Outside, Rachel could hear the horse fidgeting, and old Jonathan coughing—no doubt as a signal to her that she had kept him ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the smuggling evil that these men were actually sometimes afraid to take advantage of what fortune literally handed out to them. The schooner Walter of Falmouth was bound on a voyage from Liverpool to Chichester with a cargo of guano on May 30, 1850. Her crew consisted of Stephen Sawle, master, Benjamin Bowden, mate, Samuel Banister, seaman, and George Andrews, boy. On this day she was off Lundy Island, when Andrews espied a couple of casks floating ahead of ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... inferior to either of the others named, but is by no means unproductive, being preferred by the tobacco growers, who, however, often mingle a percentage of other soils with it, as we mingle barnyard refuse with our natural soil. Some tobacco planters have resorted by way of experiment to the use of guano, hoping to stimulate the native properties of the soil, but its effect was found to be not only exhausting to the land, but also bad for the leaf, rendering it rank and unfit ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... land. But it was a good deal to leeward of us; there is no anchorage, and the landing, which is always difficult and sometimes impossible, has to be effected in native surf-boats. It would have been interesting to see a guano island, of which this ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to Christmas, Fanning, Palmyra and attendant islets, belonging to Great Britain, in the Central Pacific Ocean, between the equator and 6 deg. N., and about 160 deg. W. They are so named because frequented for their guano by traders from the United States. Christmas Island is probably the largest atoll in the Pacific (it is about 90 m. in circuit), and was discovered by Captain Cook in 1777. The islands were annexed by Great Britain in 1888 in view of the laying of the Pacific ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
