THE BRIGHTON FERTILIZER. 145 



making the fertilizer itself more available, and acting also as 

 plant-food in the soil. 



We do not treat the fertilizer being made there "svith 

 any acid, and that brings up the question which I was in 

 hopes Prof. Goessmann would allude to, namely, the use of 

 superphosphates ; whether we had better treat our bone with 

 Sulphuric acid, or use it in its raw condition. I am lirmly of 

 the belief that superphosphates are not of so much value as 

 bone-meal. I believe I am taking a position a little in antag- 

 onism to that which our state chemist holds, and I have 

 talked with him a good many times on the subject. It is 

 true, gentlemen, that when you treat bone with sulphuric 

 acid, you make it more soluble, but its solubility lies in the 

 fact that you simply have more minutel}^ divided it. Now, if 

 you can take bone and steam it, grind it up, and reduce it to 

 an impalpable powder, have you not accomplished the same 

 thing, and also avoided the possibility of the destructiveness 

 of sulphuric acid? Two years ago, a fertilizer manufacturer 

 in Boston made a fertilizer on a very small ^scale, and at- 

 tempted to make a very good one." He sent some of it to a 

 friend of his in the suburbs, and he applied it to his soil. 

 The result was it ruined his crop. It analyzed splendidly. 

 He took the manufacturer down to his place and said to him, 

 " There is my crop to which I applied your fertilizer, — what 

 is the matter ? " The man who applied that fertilizer knew 

 what the matter was, and the manufacturer knew, also. It 

 was too strongly compounded with sulphuric acid. Now, I 

 firmly believe that many of the phosphates in the market 

 have been injured by the addition of too much strong acid. 

 At Brighton we are avoiding that. We take these large 

 head-bones of cattle and sheep, and put them into a large 

 iron digester, after the grease has been taken out of them. 

 This iron digester is a large kettle or tank, in which is re- 

 volving an apparatus composed of iron tubes, and through 

 these iron tubes, steam is passed under a pressure of sixty 

 pounds to the square inch. These bones are put in and kept 

 revolving under this high pressure of steam, for five or six 

 hours. Then they come out the greater part in fine meal, 

 much of it almost an impalpable powder. Some ot the 

 harder parts of the head, the teeth for instance, come out in 



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