The Wichita city eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1872-1883, 1875-07-22

inal cost nearly six times. The bones
are carefully sorted over, the harder
being used for knife handles, and the
softer for manure, after thorough
drying. The mill for grinding the
bones consists of a hollow iron cylin-
der filed with transverse bars revolv-
ing at high rate of speed in opposite
directions. After the bones have been
reduced to dust it is carried to a ma
chine called the mixer, where the va
rious Ingredients which make the fer
tilizer, called the Buperphosphatc, are
incorporated with it in the following
proportions: Ground bone, So per
cent. Sulphuric acid, so; fish guano,
20; bone black, 10; South Carolina
phosphate, 5.
Thousands of tons of this manure
are used by the farmers and vegetable
gardeners in this and adjoining States.
The planters in the cotton States arc
also sending for large quantities to use
upon their exhausted soil. 1t has been
found to cause wonderful difference
in the yield, in many cases doubling
the usual crop.
In another part Of the establishment
mcn were busily engaged in tilling
largo iron vessels with bones of all
sizes, and sealing the lids with mix
turc of clay, rendering them almost
air tight. These are placed in huge
furnaces and subjected for number
of hours to an intense heat. The bones
thus treated are said to be carbonized
and when examined are found to re-
semble so much charcoal. They are
then ground to various degrees of
iineness, and as thus reduced are used
by the refinerics IN clarifying sugar.
Brown sugar is dissolved in water and
the liquor thus formed is filtered
through the bone black and is discol-
orized, and when the water is evapo-
Grated the snow white sugar in your
stores is the final result. The finest
bone black when mixed with oil makes
the best paint for coaches, or is used
as the chief Ingredient in shoe black
ing.
Your readers would have been much
interested in witnessing the men at
work saving the bones into knife
handles. About a dozen men thus
employed, stood by as many small cir
cular saws which are partially i'm
mersed in vessels of water placed
beneath the tables. The bones, having
been previously cut to the proper
length, were soaked in water and then
sawed in strips to make the two pieces
which make the ordinary knife handle.
This information, interesting as it
was to your correspondent, was not
secured without considerable personal
discomfort. Coleridge speaks, / be-
licve, of the more than thirteen hun
bred distinct smells which lie detected
in the city of Cologne, though my OIL
factory organs could not discern as
many on my visit to this establish
ment. yet what was lacking in num-
bers was more than made up in the
intensity of the odors.
Hard by was a swill milk factory,
where several hundred head of cows
are kept III filthy stables and gorged
with the refuse matter of the brewer
les. The milk from this place is sold
in New Y ork and Brooklyn as ''fine
milk from Orange County," just
across a small creek was large petro-
leum refinery. As consequence of
the unhealthy odors, the vegetation in
the immediate vicinity has ceased to
exist, and the fish that used to abound
in the stream have either died or left,
and the wonder to me is how men can
subsist in such an atmosphere. The
presence of gas and slaughter houses,
varnish and soap factories, and such
establishments as ] have already men
toned are often a serious annoyance
to the people in the larger cities, and
causes them to long fer the fresh in
air of the country. The
weather in this city is very warm and
the temperature Of the
nights differs but little from that of |
the days. j. p. HARsEN.