Guano advert, Gloucester 1860
http://bbprivateer.ca/?q=panther
It’s hard to imagine the British Government getting excited about bird droppings. But in mid-19thc Britain it certainly did. Of course ministers didn’t sit around discussing anything quite so vulgar as bird poo but they did spend time talking seriously about ways of increasing agricultural and horticultural production, and one of these was guano. Guano was even considered important enough to send the Royal Navy on probably its least exotic mission of all time – a hunt for new places where large quantities of avian dung could be found, collected and exported to Britain to fertilize fields and market gardens.
Nightsoil, the subject of my last post, was still being used extensively for fertilizer in the garden and on farms in the early decades of the 19thc but campaigns to improve the water supply and public health, the installation of new drainage and sewage systems, the invention of ‘artificial fertilizers and above all access to vast quantities of guano ended its pre-eminence and caused its use to decline rapidly.
From left to right: Peruvian Pelican, Guanay Cormorant, White-Breasted Cormorant, Peruvian Booby (Image courtesy of Jeff Lawrence)
http://www.peruthisweek.com/
Read on to discover more about the Navy’s poo-hunting expeditions and how these massive imports of guano began to transform British agriculture and horticulture and made fortunes in the process… Continue reading
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