Word: guano
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...William Russell Grace a refugee from the Irish potato famine and a partner in a small ship chandler's store seven miles from Lima, Peru, changed trades. He decided that he could make more money selling guano fertilizer (bird droppings) than from ship supplies He was right. By the time he died in 1904. his W. R. Grace & Co. was a multimillion-dollar empire whose ship lines, sales agencies, railroads and import-export business touched almost every town and hamlet along South America's west coast...
Thanks to such tender care, the birds have multiplied mightily. In 1909 the annual guano crop was only 77,000 tons. Last year the protected birds turned out 240,800 tons (worth nearly $14,850,000). But the fight to make Peru secure for guano birds is ceaseless. Off the coast, cold water wells up from the bottom of the sea bringing nutrients that support vast shoals of fish on which the guano birds feed. Sometimes a shift of wind or ocean currents brings warm water to their islands. Then the fish disappear, and the birds starve...
When the warm, water came in 1891 and again in 1925, it had disastrous effects on the guano birds. Millions migrated to southern Peru; finding few islands to roost on, they took to the dangerous land, where they fell prey to all sorts of land-based enemies...
This year the cycle of disaster threatened the birds again. The sea grew warm and fish scarce. Streams of hungry birds ribboned down the coast. But this time they found sanctuary: "artificial islands" that the good Guano Co. had made for them by building walls across promontories. The birds can roost on them, safe from land enemies, and the cold sea around them swarms with fish...
Last week the migration was proceeding with hardly a casualty. Some 20 million guano birds are already established in their new quarters. Peruvians hope they will stay there permanently, out of reach of the warm-water cycle, and repay the thoughtful company with guano...