I'm John Baxter with the author and producer Stephen Moss, his new book, Ten Birds

that Change the World.

Peru, the cormorant, the cormorant's droppings turn into guano.

And this story is so strange, I go immediately stephen moss to help me tell it the discovery of

the guano on these islands the arid islands 50 meters deep i put that all together with who who did

who had the breakthrough when did they have the breakthrough that it was fertilizer

stephen well actually the incas so over a thousand years ago the inco civilization in

south america knew about guana guano is very like all seabird um who basically droppings it is very

rich in phosphates and nitrates and it's very, very good

fertilizer. But of course that had been forgotten with the end of the Inca civilization. And then in the

19th century, a British businessman called William Gibbs, based near where I live actually in Bristol,

he and his partners went over to Peru and harvested this guano.

Now the important thing here is that you mentioned the fact these were very arid islands.

Seabirds live in colonies all around the world. They live off North America, they live off Europe in colonies, but it rains in those places.

And so the guano washes away.'s some left but broadly it washes away

that didn't happen so there were vast amounts of this guano there he entered into a contract with

the peruvian government that he would pay them a fee he would ship this horrible melodorous

rather dangerous substance back to britain and then he sold it to farmers and he became the

richest commoner in England the richest non-aristocrat in England he became I compare him to

someone like Bill Gates because he was also a great philanthropist with the money he earned.

The only problem was that the money he'd earned was from Guano, which was being harvested by these poor Chinese indentured labourers,

labourers that had been brought over from China, either thinking they were going to California to take part in the gold rush,

...