178 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



rial as clear and decisive. Now, saith the author, when we 

 consider what escapes from every human being every year in 

 dung and urine, and add to these the washings of soap-grease 

 and other materials incidental to domestic purposes, we may 

 imagine the enormous quantity of the most valuable matter 

 as manure which is thus lost every year, — literally wasted. 

 Take one instance, a striking one, that of London. 



It has been ascertained by Boussingault, that a man in a 

 healthy state passes three pounds of urine daily ; and Liebig 

 states, that, in the same state, he voids five ounces and a half 

 of dung. These two quantities give a total annual quantity 

 of 1,220 pounds of liquid and solid manure voided by every 

 person, on the average. Now, taking two million as the pop- 

 ulation of London, the quantities of those manures voided 

 by the inhabitants of the metropolis amount annually to 

 1,089,285 tons. Chemistry has ascertained that the compo- 

 nent parts of the excrements of man are as valuable to vege- 

 tation as those of guano ; and, as the different sorts of guano 

 sell from six pounds to ten pounds per ton, we are warranted 

 in estimating the value of night-soil and urine at eight 

 pounds per ton, which would give the entire value of this 

 manure in London alone every year at £8,714,280, or |43,- 

 571,400 in gold. This may seem like exaggeration ; but put 

 it at half the amount, and the subject is serious enough to 

 address itself to every thinking mind. This waste is not the 

 worst of it. We claim that there is a sanitary point of view, 

 higher in importance than all considerations of moneyed 

 value : we mean so far as this waste of sewage into the 

 rivers affects the supply of drinking-water for our cities. 

 "We take two prominent instances within the State of New 

 Jersey; the two largest cities both taking their supply of 

 water from the same source, — the Passaic River. This 

 river, furnishing an illimitable supply, takes the drainage of 

 the large manufacturing town of Paterson, and the smaller 

 towns along the river, to the points where the supply is taken 

 up : in addition to these, the sewage of the city of Newark, 

 with a hundred and twenty-five thousand population, dis- 

 charged into the Passaic River, is carried up by every flood- 

 tide beyond the city, and to the very conduits where the 

 water is taken for the supply of the two cities Newark and 

 Jersey City. The operations of the United States Govern- 



