BONES. 213 



minuted^ not with coarsely broken bones. Manifold 

 precepts have, indeed, been given for dissolving the 

 latter also with sulphuric acid, and but a short time 

 since one of these prescribed methods was designated 

 as " very practical " by an English agriculturist, in 

 accordance with which the bones should be broken 

 into pieces of the size of half an inch, and half their 

 weight of sulphuric acid then poured oyer them. All 

 these instructions, whether more or less strong or 

 diluted sulphuric acid be employed, lead only to a 

 very unsatisfactory result ; inasmuch as scarcely one 

 fourth, or as a maximum one third, of the mass of 

 bones is dissolved, the residue remaining behind in 

 the form of solid and unaltered fragments. Bones 

 prepared in this manner exert, moreover, a highly 

 corrosive influence upon plants, because a part of 

 the sulphuric acid continues uncombined. 



In agricultural establishments the following meth- 

 od for the preparation of bones will be, perhaps, the 

 simplest. Form from a mixture of sifted ashes (wood, 

 pit-coal, brown-coal ashes, etc.) and earth, thrown 

 upon a barn-floor, a mound of circular shape, whose 

 interior is a pit capable of containing one hundred- 

 weight of bone-dust, and whose outer walls have 

 been made by being trodden or flattened strongly 

 with a shovel, so firm as not to yield in the subse- 

 quent stirring or turning over of the bones. Let 

 the finer part of the bone-dust be previously sifted 

 off", and placed aside. Pour what remains into the 

 cavity, and sprinkle it, during continued sturring with 



