Froceedinos of the Farmers'' Club. 721 



iKirk-inill or cider-mill, make ci'ushed hone, a preparation in which 

 the bits of bone as small as half a kernel of corn, and many of them 

 much smaller. Another set of teeth reduce it to the fineness of 

 Indian meal, as commonly used, and is called loyie meal. To make 

 bone still liner than meal, tlnit is to make dust or flour of it, has 

 lonc^ been a hard nut for the bone men. A grinder in Boston mixes 

 the meal with small sharp-edged stones, and revolving both at liigh 

 speed, the friction of the stones against the bone cuts it quite fine. 

 This is called floated bone. One of the Lister Brothers has invented 

 a mill where very hard steel faces on cylinders, cut like a course 

 rasp, revolve in opposite directions, and one faster than the other. 

 The bone meal tails between these swiftly revolving rasps, and is 

 made as fine as the best family flour. But the steel fjices must be 

 renewed once a week if the mill runs constantly. This is the reason 

 why bone flour costs about twenty dollars a ton more than crushed 

 bone. What is the diflerence in value for application to crops in 

 these three grades of ground bone ? The diflerence is chiefly in time. 

 The fine floured bone acts quickly, as much so as guano. It readily 

 dissolves in water, and goes at once to find a plant in»tlie months of 

 May and June, when the growth should l)e flush and vigorous. 



The meal acts more slowly, requiring two or three months to bring- 

 out most of its virtue ; the crushed bone more slowly still. This is 

 a suitable manure for vines, trees, lawns and permanent pastures. It 

 should be nsed when the object is less to obtain prompt returns than 

 to permanently increase the richness of a surface. Bat in the 

 amount of fertilizing matter there is no diflerence, the contrast being 

 in the months or years during which the money invested in the 

 manure is coming back. 



Much has been said* in this and other journals of the activity of 

 England in buying bone all over Europe and in America, contrastin^g 

 their thrift with our languor on the subject.- The Lister Brothers 

 last year shipped 1,800 tons to England, and this year the same 

 dealers are discussing the terms of a shipment of 3,i)00 tons. This 

 accounts for the fact that the average wheat crop of England is 

 twenty-eight bushels an acre; ours fourteen. Every time one of her 

 merchantmen leaves our harbor laden with bone dust drained from 

 our soil to fatten English sod, she works us a national wron<r. It is 

 for the farmers of this country to say whether a shame of this sort is 

 to be lasting. 



Adjourned. 



[L\ST.] 46 



