Recent Foreign Inventions

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ARTIFICIAL MANURE.—Richard A. Broomen, and J. C. Robertson, of the London Mechanics Magazine, patentees —The invention consists in producing manure in a state of powder by the desiccation and pulverization of fish, or the remains of fish, which makes, it is stated, as rich a manure as the best Peruvian guano. Fish are taken and reduced to small pieces, after which they are boiled in a common boiler, or steamed in vessels with double sides. After this they are deposited on strainers to drain, and then grated in large grates. Alter they are placed in bags, or between cloths, and pressed, in order to extract as much liquid as possible. The cakes as they come from the press are then subjected to currents of hot air, by which they are completely dried, when they are reduced to powder by machinery, and are then fit for manure. This substance may ferment when stored away—which action may be prevented by sprinkling (he powder with chloride of manganese. In some places on our coast, where certain kinds of fish come up at particular seasons of the year in great shoals, this kind of guano might be manufactured at a considerable profit, as the said .fish are never preserved for market.

Scientific American Magazine Vol 8 Issue 27This article was published with the title “Recent Foreign Inventions” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 8 No. 27 (), p. 211
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican03191853-211c

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