IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF MANURE
Year: 1853

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Orlando Reeves, of the Castle, Taunton, in
the County of Somerset, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN
THE MANUFACTURE OF MANURE."
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Orlando Reeves at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 18th January 1858.
I, ORLANDO REEVES, of the Castle, Taunton, in the County of
Somerset, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "Ix-
PROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF MANURE" to be as follows:-
First, in preparing manure for turnips, mangel wurzel, potatoes,
and other-root crops, and also for wheat and grain crops generally.
Fill a large vessel with pulverized peat, charred peat, charcoal, saw-
dust, refuse of tan. pits, tanners' bark, or any other vegetable sub-
stance, either alone or in combination with a mineral or alkali, .or
partially mixed; saturate it with dilute sulphuric acid or with any
other fixer of ammonia; then pass through it the gas generated from
coal or peat, or from any other substance used in the manufacture
of gas yielding ammonia in gas works (or wherever gas containing

page_text: ammonia can be generated) during its passage from the retorts to the
gas holders; when sufficiently charged with ammonia remove it from
the vessels, saturate it with ammoniacal gas water, and allow it to remain
together in a heated mass, covered over in order to prevent the escape
of the ammonia, and when cool add thereto the following substances or
some of them; viz., sewage of towns, gypsum, burnt clay, chalk, rich
alluvium deposited on the banks of rivers, mineral, or alkali, also some
portion of manure secondly herein-after mentioned, nightsoil, animal
excrement, urine, decomposed animal or fish, animal phosphates dis-
solved by sulphuric acid or by any other means, the mineral or earthy
phosphates, soot, human or animal urine, either alone or with the
ammoniacal gas water, and add to it dilute sulphuric acid. If in
convenient localities add also moist sea wced.
Secondly, in preparing manure for top dressing of corn. Remove
from the gas purifiers the refuse lime, and mix therewith, in an equal
quantity or otherwise, salt or fishing salt, pulverized peat or charred peat,
sulphate of soda, gypsum, or any other fixer of ammonia; afterwards
add to it, if deemed requisite. animal or fish substance, desiccated
excrement, and allow the same to remain together in a compact mass
for many days.
By substituting gypsum for the refuse gas lime, saturating it with
the ammoniacal gas water, and adding thereto the saine ingredients, a
similar manure can be made.
The Invention involved in the above description is the employment
of the disengaged ammonia from gas, and fixing it so as to form a
carbonate and sulphate of ammonia. Also by the admixture of the
refuse gas lime with common or fishing salt. The sulphuretted hydro-
gen being a poisonous gas, and most offensive, becomes neutralized.
and forms a chemical combination, which, with the fixed am-
monia, is highly conducive to vegetation as well as to the increase of
the rain.

page_text: SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent,
filed by the said Orlando Reeves in the Great Seal Patent Office,
on the 15th July 1853.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I,
ORLANDO REEVES, of the Castle, Taunton, in the County of Somerset,
send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Maiesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Letters Patent, bearing date the Eighteenth day of January, in the
year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, in the
sixteenth year of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and. suc-
cessors, give and grant unto me, the said Orlando Reeves, Her special
licence that I, the said Orlando Reeves, my executors, administrators,
and assigns, or such others as I, the said Orlando Reeves, my executors,
administrators, and assigns, should at any time agree with, and no
others, from time to time and at all times thereafter during the term
therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the
Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS
IN THE MANUFACTURE OF MANURE," upon the condition (amongst others)
that I, the said Orlando Reeves, by an instrument in writing under my
hand and seal, should particularly describe and ascertain the nature of
the said Invention, and in what manner the same was to be performed,
and cause the same to be filed in the Great Seal Patent Office within six
calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters
Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Orlando Reeves, do hereby declare
the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be
performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement thereof (that is to say):
This Invention consists in using either vegetable substances or
charcoal (either alone or in combination with an alkaline or earthy
salt) combined with chemical materials capable of absorbing and fixing

page_text: the ammonia disengaged from gas; also in the use and admixture of
the refuse lime from the gas purifiers with certain chemical, animal,
and mineral substances. The manner of carrying out this Invention is
as follows:-
"
First, take pulverized peat, charred peat, charcoal, dryed sawdust,
refuse of tan pits (the same-being first finely divided), or any other dry
and fine vegetable substance, either alone or in combination with
powdered gypsum (more or less), then saturate it with either of the
following acids or substances, and if with acids the same to be diluted
with water in the following proportions, videlicit:-If acids be used,
3 lbs. of either sulphuric, muriatic, phosphoric, boracic, or oxalic acid
diluted with 1 gallon or 10 lbs. of water. If acids be not used, then
add 9 lbs. of bisulphate of soda, or of magnesia, or of the super-sul-
phate of alumina, or 18 lbs. of the commoù sulphate of alumina to 1
bushel of the aforesaid vegetable, or mixed vegetable and mineral sub-
stances; this mixture must then be placed in a vessel similar to the
one usually denominated in gas works the dry lime purifier, and--the
impure gas passed through this until it is found to be saturated by
turning the yellow colour of turmeric brown; when this is seen to
be the case it must be removed from the purifier, and will then
be found to contain either sulphate, muriate, borate, phosphate, or
oxalate of ammonia, according to the acid or alkaline or earthy salt
employed.
:
The mixture being next removed from the purifying vessel, eva-
porate part of the moisture therefrom, and then mix the residue
with the following substances: sewage of towns, gypsum, burnt
clay, alluvial deposit from the banks of rivers, nightsoil, decomposed
animal matter or fish, bi-phosphate of lime, soot, urine, ammoniacal
liquor from gas works, or dried blood, or a mixture or mixtures of
these, so as to form a manure or manures of the following descrip-
tion for turnips, mangel wurzel, and other roots, and also cereal
Avione
:

page_text: I mix with the common refuse lime from the gas purifiers an equal
weight of a mixture composed as follows:-Fishery salt, or refuse salt
of hides, pulverized peat or charcoal mixed with sulphuric or muriatic
acid in the proportion of fifty of peat or charcoal to one part of acid,
or with two parts of sulphate of ammonia, gypsum, human ordure, and
super-phosphate of lime, in equal quantities by weight. This I mingle
well together, and apply for top dressings in the usual way practised

page_text: with respect to nitrate of soda and guano. I do not limit myself to the
precise proportions here indicated, but alter these slightly according to
the nature of the soil or crop, or to the state of the market, my object
being to produce cheap and useful manures suitable for various
agricultural purposes.
In witness whereof, I, the said Orlando Reeves, have hereunto
set my hand and seal, this Fifteenth day of July, in the year
of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-three.
Witness,
JOSEPH DUKE.
ORLANDO REEVES. (L.s.)