Note 130 — XXII.

Beds of guano have also been discovered lately by Captain Ord at the Kooria-Mooria Islands, on the south coast of Arabia, in 18° N. 56° E., 850 miles E.N.E. of Aden. Here any ship can load this valuable cargo on paying a duty of £2 per ton to the English Government, which has recently established a colony at the bay and islands of that name, and has made it a coaling station. But the African guano is by no means so strong or so pungent a manure as that found on the rainless coasts of Peru, where certain peculiarities of climate combine to make it less liable to diminution of its saline virtues by dissolution or liquefaction.