What Is Phosphate of Lime?
Phosphate of Lime, a minute constituent of all fertile soils and of most waters, is of great value to the ivory-turner, the manure-maker, the potter, the silver-assayer, the drug-manufacturer, the dyer, and the lucifer-match maker. It reaches all of them in the shape of the bones of dead animals; dead cattle from our farms, dead horses from the Pampas of South America, dead walrusses from the Arctic icebergs, dead whales from the Pacific Ocean, dead men even from fields of battle. Land and sea-plants have, as it were, milked this essential constituent of their frames, drop by drop, from the breast of nature. Animals of all classes, from the lowest to the highest, have robbed plants of their hard-gotten gains, and made their bones strong with the precious substance. Finally, the chartered robber man has robbed them all, claiming even the relics of his brethren, and obtaining in a handful of bone dust the phosphate of tons of rock and water.—Prof. G. Wilson.