CHAP. VIII. 



DISINTEGRATORS. 



789 



it has reached the predetermined fineness, there is practically no 

 re-grinding, and no loss of power from that cause. Again, the 

 shearing action of the intermitted teeth, each upon the other, enables 

 the machine to operate, whether upon wet or dry, brittle or tough, 

 fibrous or non-fibrous materials. There are, probably, no substances, 

 metals excepted, which could not be disintegrated by this machine, and 

 its power to pulverise a great variety of things has already made the 

 'Devil' the parent of certain entirely new industries. Among these 

 there is, perhaps, no more interesting example than the conversion 



Fig. 361. Barford & Perkins's Cake Breaker. 



into manure of town and market refuse. Sheffield sends occasional 

 contributions of mingled ashes, hampers, fish-bones, old boots, bottles, 

 oyster shells, paper, vegetables, straw, and other 'jetsam' to this ogre's 

 den at Heeley, all of which, after going (with a pinch of lime for the sake 

 of sanitation) through the ' Devil's ' maw, result in a digested mass of 

 fertilizer, worth several pounds sterling per ton." 



Messrs. Nicholson & Son's bone mill and disintegrator (fig. 360) 

 consists of two pairs of toothed grinding rollers, one of coarse and one 

 of finer pitch, set one above the other, an arrangement so well known 

 in bone and cake mills as to need no further description. "The mill 



