272 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. , 



cultivation. Nearly the whole difference between this balance sheet and the 

 former one arose in the life stock account. By irrigation he was enabled to 

 double, if not triple, his green and root crops, and thus render them profitable 

 instead of unprofitable. It was quite clear that if he could double his stock 

 he doubled the quantity of his manure, and thus affected importantly the 

 cereal crops. If he doubled his green and root crops, he would diminish 

 their cost one-half. This was actually the fact, and therein was his present 

 and most agreeable position. Every practical farmer knew that the losing 

 part of his farm was the root crop, it costing him more than the animal 

 repaid,, and leaving a heavy charge on the ensuing grain crops. Irrigation 

 changed all this, and permitted eaeh crop to be responsible for its own 

 annual charge, thus rendering them all remunerative. Professor Way, in 

 his recent analysis of grasses in the " Royal Agricultural Society's Jour- 

 nal," had revealed the astounding truth, that irrigated grasses contain 

 twenty-five per cent, more meat-making matter than those not irrigated. 

 We know by our great chemists that our sewers contain the elements of 

 our food, of, in fact, our very selves, and that to waste them as we now 

 do was a cruel robbery on the welfare and happiness of our people. 

 Practical experience has taught Mr. Mechi that the sewerage was all the 

 better for ample dilution ; that the more you flood your cities with limpid 

 streams, washing from every tainted and poverty-stricken court and alley 

 the elements of pestilence and suffering, the grateful earth will absorb 

 them in her bosom, and return them to you as treasures of health and 

 strength. When he spoke of liquefied manures, he must be understood 

 as meaning all excrementitious matter, solid or liquid, rendered fluid or 

 semi-fluid by the addition of water, or by decomposition in water. In dealing 

 with quantities of such decomposing matter, a disagreeable and unhealthy 

 effluvia would arise, however small the trap or cover of the tank ; but experi- 

 ence had at length taught him that a jet of waste steam admitted into the tank 

 above the agitated mass of putrefaction effectually prevented any noisome odor. 

 To irrigate a farm of 200 acres you would require four-horse steam power ; 

 fifteen yards per acre of three-inch iron pipe ; a circular tank, about thirty 

 feet in diameter and twenty feet deep ; two hundred yards of gutta percha 

 two-inch hose ; a gutta percha jet ; and a pair of force pumps, capable of 

 discharging 100 gallons per minute. At present prices, all this could be 

 effected at about 61. per acre, so that the tenant paying 9s. per acre to his 

 landlord for such an improvement would be a great gainer. While touch- 

 ing on irrigation, it might be useful to consider drainage, with which it 

 had a close connection. Of course, without drainage, natural or artificial 

 irrigation would be injurious. There could be no doubt as to the necessity 

 for tapping sand or peat pots, or other natural and free receivers of water, 

 when surrounded by tenacious clays. Up-and-down drains would gener- 

 ally do this ; but where they did not, lateral branches might be added. 

 Every farmer with 200 or 300 acres, who had not a steam engine, had a 

 great lesson to learn, as a good four-horse power steam engine would tire 

 any sixteen real horses that could be found, the comparative cost being 



