the Ashley and Cooper Rivers and from Chisholm's Island in Bull River, near Saint Helena Sound. The company owns Swan Island, situated in the Caribbean Sea, about 290 miles off Jamaica, and the phosphate of lime was obtained from that point until 1866 or 1867, when the reopening of the south gave access to the Charleston beds. The company of late bas used a considerable quantity of the rock from Navassa, a small island lying between Cuba and Santo Domingo, a reddish deposit, rich in phosphate of lime. This deposit is estimated to contain on the average 72 per cent. of phosphate of lime, while the brown deposit from Saint Helena Sound, technically known as "marshrock," contains 60 per cent., and the yellow "land-rock," from the vicinity of Charleston, only 50. About 12,000 tons of this rock is used annually in the Woods Holl establishment. Great piles of rock are to be seen lying out of doors and under sheds, and at the time of my visit it was estimated that there were seven or eight hundred tons on hand. The only damage to which it is liable from exposure is that it collects moisture and becomes more difficult to grind. In such cases it is piled in great heaps upon a brick floor, and roughly kiln. dried by a fire of soft coal kindled under it.

The sulphuric acid used is manufactured on the spot from Sicily sulphur, which is brought in vessels from Boston and direct from the Mediterranean. About 1,200 tons of sulphur are used annually, and not far from 3,000 tons of sulphuric acid. The sulphuric acid used in manufac ture is brought up to a standard density indicated by 66 on the Baumé hydrometer, a specific gravity of 1.7674.

The buildings used in this branch of the business are nearly as extensive as all the others. The three leaden tanks have a capacity of 185,000 cubic feet, the smaller containing 48,000 the others 2,000 and 6,500 respectively.

In the early days of the business the sulphuric acid was brought from Waltham, Mass., and New Haven, Conn., in carboys, but since 1866 it has been manufactured in Woods Holl at a large saving of expense. The Leopoldshall kainit, which averages about 12 per cent. potash, comes from the mines at Leopoldshall, in the Duchy of Anhalt, near Stassfurt, in Germany. Its use is comparatively recent, until this year it having been impracticable to obtain it in any considerable quantity. At the time of my visit a Hamburg brig was discharging a cargo at the wharf. Not far from 500 tons are used annually. It takes the place of the coarse salt formerly used, a refuse product from the gunpowder works at New Haven, Conn.

The process of manufacture is sufficiently simple. The fish-scrap, on its reception, is stored, after being mixed with about 3 per cent. of its weight of kainite. This is a precaution necessary to prevent fermentation and putrefaction. Experiments are now in progress to test the effect of a large mixture of kainite, which it is hoped will do away entirely with this trouble. Common salt, as has been stated, was formerly used for this purpose.

The phosphate, as needed, is crushed in a stone-crushing machine, and ground between millstones to the consistency of fine flour. A convenient arrangement of hoppers and elevators greatly facilitates this part of the work.

The scrap having been stored in one wing of the factory, the ground phosphate in another, the sulphuric acid having been forced into a reservoir near by, by pneumatic pressure, the process of mixing is easily carried on. For this work, two of Poole & Hunt's patent mixers are employed. These are larger basins of iron, each of which contains about a ton of the mixed material. In these the ingredients are placed in the proportion of 1,000 pounds of phosphate, 900 of scrap, and from 300 to 450 pounds of sulphuric acid. The basins then revolve rapidly, while a series of plows on one side, also revolving, thoroughly stir the mass which passes under them. Fifteen minutes suffices for a thorough mixture, and the guano is removed to a storage-shed, where it remains for six weeks or more to allow the ingredients to thoroughly combine. It is then thrown into hoppers, passed through rapidly-revolving wire screens, and after it has been packed in 200-pound sacks is ready for the market. About 600 bags can be filled in a day.

Before the invention of the Poole & Hunt mixing machine the guano was mixed with hoes in large wooden or stone tubs. This process was laborious and very expensive, and various machines were devised, but they proved failures because the materials caked, clogging the wheels and knives in a very short time.

The guano often contains hard lumps such as cannot be pulverized by the wire screen. Residue of this kind is subjected to the action of the Carr disintegrator, which consists of two wheels revolving in opposite directions at the rate of 600 revolutions to the minute.*

The offensive odor of the factories renders them disagreeable to persons residing in the neighborhood, and legal measures have been taken in one or two instances to prevent the manufacturers from carrying on their business, May 5, 1871, at the session of the United States circuit court in New Haven, Judge Woodruff, Connecticut vs. Enoch Coe, of Brooklyn, N. Y., granting an injunction to restrain the defendant from manufacturing manure from fish at his works in Norwalk Harbor, on the ground that the same created a nuisance. In 1872 the Shelter Island Camp-meeting Association made an effort to have the factories on Shelter Island closed, on the same grounds. People interested in building up Woods Holl as a watering place once agitated legal measures to compel a removal of the works, but the general sentiment of the town of Falmouth, in which the company pays heavy taxes, and specially of the many villagers of Woods Holl who earn their living in the works, prevented any results.

*The above description was written up in 1874 from facts contributed by Messrs. Crowell and Shiverick, of the Pacific Guano Company, and short-hand notes taken by Mr. H. A. Gill.-G. B. G.

4. The Cumberland Bone Company's works.

The following account of a similar establishment in Maine is taken bodily from the report of Boardman & Atkins. The facts appear to have been compiled from an article in the Lewiston Evening Journal, for August 17, 1874.

"The Cumberland Bone Company, whose works are located in Booth Bay, is more largely engaged in the use of fish-scrap in the manufacture of commercial fertilizers than any other company operating in this State. The works of this company, formerly located in Cumberland County, were removed to Booth Bay in 1873-74, and altogether occupy six buildings for the various purposes connected with their business. They use South Carolina phosphatic rock, Nevassa, ground bones, fish, scrap, sulphuric acid, salt cake, and a slight amount of deodorizing compound. The phosphatic rock is heavy and solid, of a grayish color, in lumps of all sizes, and is bought by the cargo. The Nevassa is reddish brown in color, quite fine, a little lumpy, but not at all solid, and is a sort of guano from an island of the same name in the West Indies. These two are ground together in the proportion of two parts of the former to one of the latter; being ground to a fine powder which is of a grayish cinnamon-brown color. The fish-scrap used by the company is furnished by the Atlantic Oil Works, whose establishment is situated very near the works of the former company. Before being used it is treated with the deodorizing mixture-a substance of a very faint yellow color, of which, judging from its appearance, one would say that gypsum might be the foundation. This mixture is made in one of the buildings of the company provided with a furnace and the necessary tanks or retorts, and its preparation is a secret process, understood to have been invented by the president of the company. It is said to have been thoroughly tested and to work well, and it is thought will come into use generally among the companies that handle fish-scrap. At present a good many of them are troubled with injunctions because of the stench arising from the accumulated scrap, which is constantly giving off, its ammonia. After being treated with this deodorizer the scrap is placed in barrels, and is quite inoffensive, a slight odor of ammonia being observable. Bones are ground raw; to get them fine enough they go through several mills, but they are not reduced near so fine as the phosphatic rock or Nevassa. The company sell large quantities of this bone meal as feed. One of the buildings of the company is used for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, of which sulphur and niter are the principal ingredients. Salt cake is a residue from the distillation of niter as carried on in the acid works. The mixing of the ingredients into superphosphate is performed in the mixing room, an apartment of the main manufacturing building. Over a circular floor, about eight feet in diameter, revolve horizontally several arms with breaks and scoops attached. Ingredients are poured upon the floor, the arms revolve, dense fumes

arise from the chemical action, and in a very short space of time the process is complete. The arms stir the mixture together perfectly and collect it in the middle of the table, whence it is dumped into the basement. Here it is piled up, and as soon as convenient it is passed through a long cylinder, where it is dried by hot air. It is then passed through a long series of revolving sieves, and all the coarser particles, which consist altogether of pieces of fish, are dried and ground over again. The superphosphate is then barreled. It is a very dark gray, almost black in some specimens, but drying off to a light gray. In some lots there is a brownish tinge. In mechanical texture the superphosphate in the barrels is not perfectly fine-a great quantity of bits of fish remaining unchanged in it. The proportion of the different ingredients used in the manufacture of superphosphate at these works cannot be stated, and is probably one of the secrets of the business. A gentleman who has furnished much information for this paper says that "one ton of fish scrap furnished the ammonia for three tons of superphosphate; the larger portion of the other ingredients being Nevassa, which costs about $14 per ton, and gypsum, which costs 75 cents per ton." The capital stock of this company is $200,000, and it gives em ployment to about fifty men. It made in 1874, 10,000 tons of commercial fertilizer, valued at $450,000. The works are regarded as the most complete of the kind in the country, are provided with a seventy-fivehorse-power engine, and with extensive fixtures for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, which when in operation will make six tons of acid per day. The entire cost of the buildings and machinery was $110,000. It is obvious that these works were located here with good reason. One sees a car moved by steam ascending from the pogy-oil factory loaded with chum. It passes upon scales, is weighed and then moves on over an immense bin into which it is dumped. A chemical mixture is added to the heap to prevent the escape of ammonia and to kill the offensive effluvia."-[Boardman & Atkins, op. cit., pp. 38-40.

5. The Quinnipiac Fertilizer Company's Works.

The Quinnipiac Fertilizer Company of New Haven was established in 1852, by William D. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.; and is the oldest es tablishment of its kind in the United States. It was founded under Mr. Hall's patent for drying fish scrap by solar heat. Scrap was purchased from the oil manufacturers of Maine and Long Island, and, having been prepared for agricultural purposes, was sold to the Connecticut farmers. for thirty cents a bushel. This fertilizer was not essentially differeut from that now sold by the same company as "dry-ground scrap." In 1854 the manufactory was removed from Wallingford to the banks of the Poquannock River, in Groton, and the company began buying fish and making oil. In 1857 it was again removed to Pine Island, where

the buildings now occupied by the company were put up. From that time their business has steadily increased. In 1871 the company began, in connection with their other enterprises, the manufacture of superphosphates; this was done for the purpose of using the fish scrap immediately after the oil had been expressed, thus avoiding that loss of ammonia which takes place when the pomace is allowed to ferment. They still continue the process of solar drying on platforms, finding that it is more profitable to prepare in large quantities in this manner, at the same time using what is necessary in the manufacture of superphosphates. They have tried several machines for artificial drying, but have not found any which are sufficiently capacious to be profitably employed.

In the manufacture of their superphosphate they use dried and fresh fish-scrap, Nevassa phosphates, pulverized bone, kainit, and sulphuric acid.

They produce annually about 2,000 tons of superphosphates and 3,000 to 4,000 tons of other fertilizers, which are widely distributed through the New England and Southern States, and are also sent to the West Indies, Santa Cruz, Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Bermudas.

Their manufactured products are classed by four grades: (1) Pine Island Superphosphate, containing from 4 to 5 per cent. of ammonia, 7 to 9 per cent. of phosphoric acid (average), and 2 per cent. of potash; (2) Pine Island Guano, containing 7 per cent. of ammonia and 7 of phosphoric acid, which is intended chiefly for tobacco farmers and marketgardners; (3) Quinnipiac dry-ground fish guano, which is sun-dried scrap thoroughly ground; and (4) crude or half-dried scrap.*

6. The Crowell Chemical Manufacturing Company.

A NEW INDUSTRY.-The Crowell Chemical Manufacturing Company, at Woods Holl, are now building a large factory that is nearly completed for the purpose of making fish flour for the European markets, this flour being a dry, inodorous poudrette for agricultural purposes.

As soon as the building is completed a large amount of machinery that is ready for the purpose will be placed in order immediately, and then the company will be ready to commence operations.

They will require twenty tons of fish each day to supply their needs, and as the whole fish is utilized by their process they desire large ones for their business, the bodies being valued in the following order: Blackfish, porpoises, sharks, dog-fish, porgies, and skates, the fish being bought entirely by weight.

Sharks will be purchased at about the same rates as porgies, as will dog-fish. The company will employ from one to three steamers to con

*These facts were given us by Mr. H. L. Dudley, president of the company, during a visit to Pine Island in October, 1877.-G. B. G.