manure, and one to the history of which very peculiar
interest attaches, is Bones. Employed first in 1774, their use has
steadily increased ever since, and their popularity as a phosphatic
manure is among farmers in this country quite unrivalled. Like guano,
although to a less extent, the early practice of using bones has done
much to arouse interest in the problems of manuring, and to bring home
to farmers the principles underlying that practice. It was from bones
that Liebig first made superphosphate of lime, and the distinguished
veteran experimenter, Sir John Bennet Lawes, has told us that the
benefit accruing from the use of bones on the turnip crop first drew his
attention to the interesting problem connected with the application of
artificial manures. Bones were first used in Yorkshire. Shortly
afterwards they were applied to exhausted pastures in Cheshire. Soon
their use became so popular that the home supply was found inadequate;
and they were imported from Germany and Northern Europe, Hull being the
port of disembarkation. So largely were they used by English farmers,
that Baron Liebig considered it necessary to raise a warning protest
against their lavish application. "England is robbing all other
countries of the condition of their fertility. Already, in her eagerness
for bones, she has turned up the battle-fields of Leipzig, of Waterloo,
and of the Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has carried
away the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she removes
from the shores of other countries to her own the manurial equivalent of
three millions and a half of men, whom she takes from us the means of
supporting, and squanders down her sewers to the sea. Like a vampire,
she hangs upon the neck of Europe--nay, of the entire world!--and sucks
the heart-blood from nations without a thought of justice towards them,
without a shadow of lasting advantage to herself."[216]

_Different Forms in which Bones are used._

It may be pointed out that bones have done much to alter our system of
farming, by helping to develop turnip culture. Used at first in
comparatively large pieces, experience gradually showed that a finer
state of division facilitated their action. Yet it was long before the
prejudice in favour of rough bones disappeared; and it was not till 1829
that Mr Anderson of Dundee introduced machinery for preparing 1/2-inch
and 1/4-inch bones and bone-dust. In the early days of their use, b