440 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
grease in a tank erected for the purpose. When taken from the tank 
the bones should be sorted, and the clean, firm shins of oxen and cows 
be sold at a good price—say $80 per ton—for the purposes of brush and 
button makers. The thin bones can be crushed to bone meal (or coarsely- 
ground bone) in a mill costing not more than a common bark-mill; and 
this coarsely-ground material can be made quite fine by sulphuric acid 
and water. The grease and choice bones will nearly repay the outlay 
for the mixed bones, and the cost of the manure will be substantially 
that of the acid, added to the expense of labor in boiling and grinding. 
Before commencing operations, however, it would be well for the opera- 
tor to examine the working of some large bone-mill. In making bone 
meal, the bones are crushed by iron teeth or prongs arranged as in 
a bark-mill, and are then run through finer teeth. The production 
of bone flour involves a large expense. In this case two broad wheels, 
faced with the hardest ridged steel, revolve in opposite directions, and 
a stream of bone meal passes between the points of nearest centact. If 
the bones were put between flat stones revolving as in flour mills, sufii- 
cient grease and glue would be eliminated to fill the grooves, and the 
faces would slip. 
Leached ashes.—At a meeting of the Western New York Farmers’ 
Club, Mr. Quinby stated that he had used over ten thousand bushels of 
leached ashes in the last three years, and had found them good for all 
crops on a sandy or chestnut loam, and that he would cover his whole 
farm wita them if he could get them. When put in the hill they started 
corn early and vigorously; and when applied to wheat, at the rate of 
two to three hundred bushels per acre, they had increased the crop 100 
per cent. They also proved to be an excellent fertilizer for clover. Mr. 
Collins stated that he had put leached ashes an inch deep on four acres 
of heavy clay land, and had obtained a fine crop of corn. The clay was 
rendered more friable and mellow. 
Marl in Mississippi.—Mr. J. P. Steele, of Savannah, Tennessee, states 
that thousands of acres of land in Mississippi, lying on or near the Mobile 
and Ohio Railroad, underlaid with excellent shell marl, cropping out in 
the valleys, and only threé to six feet below the surface of the ridges, 
ean be bought for $5 to $10 an acre. A large portion of Northern and 
Central Mississippi is underlaid with this marl. 
The menhaden fisheries of Long Island.—Menhaden come in vast shoals 
in the spring of the year, into the bays at the east end of Long Island, 
for the purpose of spawning. At that stage, however, they are gene- 
rally in poor condition, and yield but little oil. They are not caught for 
food, but to be rendered into oil and manure. The number taken 
during the season of 1869 is estimated at 67,500,000. In addition, 
the shore seines and pounds took 5,500,000, of which more than 
one-half were sold to farmers, to be applied to the land for manure, 
while the remainder were taken to factories to be pressed for oil. The 
business of extracting the oil from the menhaden was commenced with 
the establishment of one factory, about twenty years ago. During the 
season of 1869 there were seventeen factories in operation, for a larger 
or smaller part of the time, on the shores of the Peconic and Gardiner’s 
Bay. The capital invested in these factories, with the boats, nets, &c., 
is about half a million of dollars. Similar factories have been estab- 
lished in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia. 
During the same season there were over thirty gangs of men, three 
boats to a gang, out in Peconic Bay, one of which made a catch of 
5,000,000 fish; the smallest catch was 500,000; the average, 2,500,000. 
For a period of seven months, over one hundred vessels and upwards of 
