Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of dead animal and vegetable matter at the bottom of the ocean, which, as the coast rose, had been so lifted as to appear upon the crests of the islands formed, and from the chemical change which it had undergone during its submergence, and thereafter, had become the substance known as guano. If, however, such a collection of organic remains were acted upon by pressure and heat derived from volcanic sources at the time of, or previous to, its upheaval, the result would be a removal of most of the organic material, and its conversion into Hydro-carbons, such as are found in the Bitumen, while the inorganic portions would remain agglomerated together in the form of a more or less porous shale, mainly made up of the siliceous lorica of such organisms as were common in the waters of the sea in which it was formed. He pointed out the fact, that the valuable deposits of guano which are found upon the Pacific coast of South America, are rapidly disappearing, and before very long it will become necessary to look in a new direction for a supply of this now indispensable material. He was convinced that the sea-bottom would hereafter be the storehouse from which such a want will be supplied. He had, in this connection, been greatly pleased to meet with one account, written by a gentleman who had spent some time at the Chincha Islands, connected with the guano trade, and who had a record of an island which had risen from the bottom of the sea in that locality, during one of the volcanic disturbances so common there, upon the summit of which was found guano. He also called attention to the fact, that although it served very well the purposes of a fertilizer, yet the accumulation of recent bird droppings of that coast, as well as of our own and of the European, is not guano, and in South Ame...