272 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



the benevolent exertions of Dr. Guthrie and others 

 of the free church of Edinburf^h, for tlie board, 

 lodging, clothing, and education of the orphan 

 scholars of the ragged schools of that city. Upon 

 calling at the well-conducted house, Mr. Macdo- 

 nald, the intelligent master of " the Marionville 

 Industrial School," readily afforded me every in- 

 formation in his power. " The house contains," 

 he said, "at the present time, about thirty inmates." 

 He introduced me to the school-room, whereabout 

 fifteen healthy-looking boys were at their lessons ; 

 showed me over the dormitories ; pointed out to 

 me " a sick-room;" but he added, " We have had no 

 occasion to use it yet." The school was opened, it 

 seems, on the 1st of July. All the inmates of the 

 house have, during this time, enjoyed general good 

 health. He employs the boys occasionally to 

 carry the sewage from the open sewer, which flows 

 at the bottom of the grounds, to water the garden 

 plots. He sometimes perceived a peculiar odour 

 arising from the Lochend meads, but upon the 

 whole had no reason to apprehend any injurious 

 effects. 



Here, then, has existed for a series of years, 

 within three-quarters of a mile of Edinburgh, a 



field of about forty acres (and still larger sewage- 

 irrigated fields are at not much greater distances 

 from that city), which not only demonstrates by 

 its enormous rent the value of sewage employed in 

 the irrigation of grass land, but at the same 

 time shows that these irrigations may be carried 

 on, not only with advantage to the public, but 

 with very little annoyance to those who dwell im- 

 mediatelyaround the very land on which the sewage 

 flows. 



It is very true, that no one with whom we have 

 to do proposes to thus employ the metropolitan 

 sewage in such close proximity to any densely 

 populated place ; but the result of the Edinburgh 

 meadow experience does seem to prove that if the 

 whole of the London sewage was conveyed at a 

 sufHciently high level to a considerable distance 

 from the metropolis — that then that huge mass of 

 liquid manure, if employed over any extent of grass 

 lands, (the best, the most perfect, of all deodori- 

 zers), would assuredly not only cause the growth 

 of great crops of grass, but be not productive of 

 such disagreeable or noxious results as it now 

 causes by being mingled with, and allowed to de- 

 compose in, the waters of the Thames. 



INFLUENCE OF LIGHT ON ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE. 



Of all the elements which play a high part in 

 the material universe, the light which emanates 

 from the sun is certainly the most remarkable, 

 whether we view it in its sanitary, scientific, or 

 sesthetical relations. It is, to speak metaphorically, 

 the very life-blood of nature, without which every- 

 thing material would fade and perish. It is the 

 fountain of all our knowledge of the external uni- 

 verse, and it is now becoming the historiographer 

 of the visible creation, recording and transmitting 

 to future ages all that is beautiful and sublime in 

 organic and inorganic nature, and stamping on 

 perennial tablets the hallowed scenes of domestic 

 life, the ever-varying phases of social intercourse, 

 and the more exciting tracks of bloodshed and of 

 war, which Christians still struggle to reconcile 

 with the principles of their faith. 



The influence of light on physical life is a 

 subject of which we at present know very little, 

 and one, consequently, in which the public, in 

 their still greater ignorance, will take little 

 interest ; but the science of light, which, under 

 the name of Optics has been studied for nearly 

 two hundred years by the brightest intellects 

 in the Old and New World, consists of a 

 body of facts and laws of the most extraordinary 

 kind — rich in jjopular as well as profound know- 

 ledge, and affording to educated students, male 

 and female, simple and lucid explanations of that 

 boundless and brilliant array of phenomena which 

 light creates, and manifests, and develops. While 



it has given to astronomy and navigation their 

 telescopes and instruments of discovery, and to the 

 botanist, the naturalist, and the physiologist their 

 microscopes, simple, compound, and polarising, it 

 has shown to the student of nature how the juices 

 of plants and animals, and the integuments and 

 films of organic bodies, elicit from the pure sun- 

 beam its prismatic elements — clothing fruit and 

 flower with their gorgeous attire, bathing every 

 aspect of nature in the rich and varied hues of 

 spring and of autumn — painting the sky with 

 azure, tnd the clouds with gold. 



Thus initiated into the mysteries of light, and 

 armed with the secrets and powers which science has 

 wrested from the God of Day, philosophers of our 

 own age have discovered in certain dark rays of 

 the sunbeam a magic though invisible pencil, which 

 can delineate instantaneously every form of life 

 and being, and fix in durable outline every expres- 

 sion, demoniacal or divine, which the passions and 

 intellects of man can impress upon the living clay. 

 They have imparted to the cultivators of art their 

 mighty secret, and thousands of travelling artists 

 are now in every quarter of the globe recording all 

 that earth, and ocean, and air can display — all that 

 man has perpetrated against the strongholds of his 

 enemies, and all that he has more wisely done to 

 improve and embelUsh the home which has been 

 given him. 



A branch of knowledge so intimately connected 

 with our physical well-being, so pregnant \vith dis« 



