172 BOARD^OF AGRICULTURE. 



lation of four hundred million, — a people among whom agri- 

 culture is held in higher estimation than, perhaps, in any other 

 country in the world. The necessities of these people to 

 make every foot of land yield its utmost to sustain their teem- 

 ing population have made them look upon this subject of 

 manure as a vital question. So high is the estimate set by 

 these people on human excretions, that their laws forbid its 

 waste. Receptacles for securing it are placed along the roads 

 and in convenient places ; and the oldest and most helpless 

 persons are not deemed wholly useless to the family by Avhich 

 they are supported. The Chinese mix the fresh night-soil 

 with clay, which is then formed into cakes, and dried, and, 

 under the name of tafeu, becomes an extensive article of com- 

 merce in the neighborhood of their populous cities. What in 

 European towns would be considered an intolerable nuisance 

 is here looked upon with the utmost complacency. The 

 coolies, who carry each morning the produce of then* farms 

 to market, bring back each one two buckets of the precious 

 material slung at the ends of his bamboo-pole. It is not 

 only the Chinese who have set such value on night-soil. The 

 ancient Latin and Greek writers have discoursed largely on 

 the use of manures, and it is hardly to be supposed that they 

 overlooked the value of night-soil. Two thousand years ago, 

 the oldest of the Roman teachers of agriculture, in answer to 

 the question " What is good tillage," stated the first requi- 

 site as " To plough," the second " To plough," the third 

 " To manure." Study, said he, " to have a large dungliill ; 

 keep your compost carefully ; when you carry it out, scatter 

 it, and pulverize it ; carry it out in the autumn ; lay dung 

 around the roots of your olives in autumn." 



The greatest of all the Latin poets, the immortal Virgil, 

 scientist as well as poet, did not disdain to discourse of the 

 economy of a farm in his sublime " Georgics." Discoursing 

 to a people whose chief magistrates had been husbandmen, 

 such as Lucius Cincinnatus, called from the plough to be 

 dictator; such, too, as Fabricius, Curius, and Camillus, no 

 less distinguished in agriculture than in the art of war; to 

 a people who held the husbandmen in such esteem as jeal- 

 ously to resent any affront to their calling, — this poet lauds 

 the use of "/af dung " as a fertilizer. Among modern nations 

 we find two of the most refined countries of Europe, and the 



