IMPROVE- MENTS IN MIXING, COMBINING, AND OTHERWISE TREATING CERTAIN MATTERS AND SUBSTANCES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF MANURE
Year: 1859

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Edward Gedge at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 16th
May 1859. A communication from abroad by Louis Parent, of Saint
Marcel-les-Chalon, France..
I, WILLIAM EDWARD GEDGE, of the Firm of John Gedge and Son,
4, Wellington Street South, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, Patent
Agents, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVE-
MENTS IN MIXING, COMBINING, AND OTHERWISE TREATING CERTAIN MATTERS AND
SUBSTANCES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF MANURE," communicated to me from
abroad by Louis Parent, of Saint Marcel-les-Chalon, France, to be as
follows:-
I purpose composing my manure, firstly, of fecal matters; secondly, of
animal remains; thirdly, of peat, cut at least one year before being used;
fourthly, of tan, or the refuse of tanneries; fifthly, of stable manure; and,
sixthly, of plaster. I require large sheds for its preparation and defence from
the weather, and two ditches with bottom and sides of masonry, separated by
a wall with flood gate; one of these ditches will contain the solid, and the
other the liquid fecal matters, the flood gate permitting the passage of the
liquid from the first to the second. The peat being freed from impurities, is
reduced to powder after proper desication, and in this state will absorb six
times its volume of liquid. I then throw as much of it into the ditch con-
taining the solid matters as will, when properly incorporated with them,

page_text: permit the contents of the ditch to be emptied by the spade, and placed
beneath a shed. Four or five months afterwards this matter is dried like the
peat in fine weather, and returned to a shed, where, in heaping, after every layer
of about 15 inches, a certain quantity of liquid from the second ditch is thrown
over it. The animal matters are mixed as near as may be in the following
proportions, and similarly stratified:-Dried peat, ; tan, ; dung, ; and
plaster, sprinkling with liquid matters. A rapid fermentation then takes
place, and being moved by the spade, and divided into thin pieces, fermen-
tation is renewed. I now use the animal remains cut into pieces, and form,
under another shed, the following heap:-Firstly, a layer about six inches
thick of the above-described composition; secondly, animal remains placed
apart from each other; thirdly, a layer about one-fifth of an inch thick of
plaster, and continue heaping in the same order until the heap is about 6 feet
high, sprinkling with liquid matter and blood after the second bed, and every
successive one. I then make another heap by its side in like manner; in
about 3 months in summer and 6 in winter the decomposition of the animal
matters will have taken place. I then change the position of the heap,
dividing with a spade, and two months afterwards, when I divide a second
time the decomposition is complete. The fecal and animal matters thus
prepared are then mixed in the proportion of of the first to of the second,
and placed in one heap under another shed, sprinkling every layer of 15 inches
or so with liquid matters. In a few days a tolerably rapid fermentation will
take place, and the manure be ready for the agriculturist.