490 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



The phosphate, as ueetleil, is crpshed in a stone-crnshiug machine^ 

 and ground between millstones to the consistency of fine lioiir, A con- 

 venient arrangement of hoppers and elevators greatly facilitates this 

 part of the work. 



The scrap having been stored in one wing of the factory, the ground 

 phosphate in another, the sulphuric acid having been forced into a 

 reservoir near by, bj' pneumatic pressure, the process of mixing is easily 

 carried on. For this work, two of Poole & Hunt's patent mixers are 

 employed. These are larger basins of iron, each of which contains 

 about a ton of the mixed material. In these the ingredients are 

 placed in the proportion of 1,000 pounds of phosphate, 900 of scrap, 

 and from 300 to 450 pounds of sulphuric acid. The basins then revolve 

 rapidly, while a series of jdows on one side, also revolving, thoroughly 

 stir the mass which passes under them. Fifteen minutes suffices for a 

 thorough mixture, and the guano is removed to a storage-shed, where 

 it remains for six weeks or more to allow the ingredients to thoroughly 

 combine. It is then thrown into hoppers, passed through rapidly-re- 

 volving wire screens, and after it has been packed in 200 pound sacks 

 is ready for the market. About GOO bags can be filled in a day. 



Before the invention of the Poole & Hunt mixing machine the guano 

 was'Tuixed with hoes in large wooden or stone tubs. This process was 

 laborious and very expensive, and various machines were devised, but 

 they proved failures because the materials caked, clogging the wheels 

 and knives in a very short time. 



The guano often contains hard lumps such as cannot be pulverized by 

 the wire screen. Eesidue of this kind is subjected to the action of the 

 Carr disintegrator, which consists of two wheels revolving in opposite 

 directions at the rate of COO revolutions to the minute.* 



The offensive odor of the factories renders them disagreeable to per- 

 sons residing in the neighborhood, and legal measures have been taken 

 in one or two instances to prevent the manufacturers from carrying on 

 their business, May 5, 1871, at the session of the United States circuit 

 court in New Haven, Judge Woodruff, Connecticut vs. Enoch Coe, of 

 Brooklyn, N. Y., granting an injunction to restrain the defendant from 

 manufacturing manure from fish at his works in Norwalk Harbor, on the 

 ground that the same created a nuisance. In 1872 the Shelter Island 

 Camp-meeting Association made an effort to have the factories on Shel- 

 ter Island closed, on the same grounds. People interested in building 

 up Woods Holl as a watering place once agitated legal measures to 

 compel a removal of the works, but the general sentiment of the town 

 of Falmouth, in which the company pays heavy taxes, and specially of 

 the many villagers of Woods Holl who earn their living in the works^ 

 prevented any results. 



* The above description was writteu up iu 1874 from facts contributed by Messrs. 

 Crowell aud Shiverick, of the Pacific Giiauo Cotnpanj', and short-hand notes taken 

 by Mr. H. A. Gill.— G. B. G. 



