THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



97 



THE USE OF SEWAGE IN IRRIGATION. 



BY CUTHBEET AV. JOHNSON, ESQ., T.K.S, 



That an enormous mass of liquid manure is in- 

 cessantly pourinj^ into our rivers, is admitted by 

 every one. That all attempts have failed to pro- 

 fitably abstract the fertilizing contents of Our 

 sewers by chemical means is equally well known ; 

 and yet no person with whom we have to do 

 doubts that these outpourings tend very considerbly 

 to the impoverishment of our country. These truths 

 have, during the present century, from time to 

 time been brought before the puWic. Commis- 

 sioners of sewers have been warned ; sanitary 

 authorities have been implored to remember, and 

 act upon these great, these startling facts. 



Hitherto, however, but little fruit has resulted 

 from these exhortations. Science has done her 

 part, and done it well ; the practical farmer has 

 pointed to the sewage-irrigated meads of Edin- 

 burgh, of Clipstone, of Rugby, and of Milan — emi- 

 nently successful experiments on a noble scale ; 

 he has referred to the use of the scv/age pump at 

 Rugby, at Tiptree, and in Scotland; but he has 

 pointed out these profitable uses of sewage appa- 

 rently to the blind and the deaf only. 



Within these few days Mr. Mechi has begun a 

 tournament in the same arena, and with all his 

 wonted vigour, and never exhausted zeal and good 

 humour. Baron Liebig, the most eloquent of 

 agricultural chemists, has backed the Alderman 

 with a vivid picture of our national folly, in a letter, 

 to the greater portion of which I heartily sub- 

 scribe. 



It is very true, as the great German chemist re- 

 minds his readers, that the exportation of corn, or 

 any other portions of organic matters from a 

 country, tends to render that land less fertile. We 

 need hardly set about convincing ourselves of this 

 truth, by remembering the fate of largely-exporting 

 corn countries. Sardinia, and Sicily, and the Afri- 

 can shores of the Mediterranean, once granaries of 

 Rome, the lands even of Northern America— all 

 tell the same tale by their now impoverished con- 

 dition. 



Few of my readers will doubt these facts. All 

 Cheshire knows that that fine county exported the 

 produce of its pastures until it was obhged to have 

 recourse to crushed bones and other fertihzers of a 

 similar composition, to restore to their pastures 

 what their unrivalled cheese had for ages been 

 gradually removing. 



But when we admit these important facts, how 

 commonly do we stop short, and omit to remem-_ 

 ber that, although we do not export corn, yet we 

 send our corn into huge cities, where it is as much 

 lost to the fields of our island as if we had shipped 

 it for another country ! We do not send the corn 

 abroad it is true, but we sell it to those citizens 

 who consume it, and then (through their sewers) 

 export all the fertilizing matter the corn produces 

 into the adjoining river, and thence into the sea, 



It was after glancing at these nationally neglected 

 truths that Liebig has just reminded us of the im- 

 poverishing effect of, thus losing fertilizing matters 

 from any country. 



" If it is perceived that no country can perpetually 

 supply another with corn, then must it be still easier 

 to understand that an importation of manures from 

 another country must cease still earher, since their 

 exportation diminishes the production of corn and 

 meat in that country in so rapid proportions that 

 this decrease in a very short time forbids the ex- 

 portation of manure. If it is considered that a pound 

 of bones contains in its phosphoric acid a neces- 

 sary condition for tbe production of 60lbs. of wheat, 

 that the English fields have become capable by the 

 importation of 1,000 tons of bones of producing 

 200,000 bushels more of wheat in a series of years 

 than they would have produced without this sup- 

 ply, then we can judge of the immense loss of fer- 

 tility which the German fields have sustained by 

 the exportation of so many hundred thousand tons 

 of bones which have gone from Germany to Eng- 

 land. It will be conceived that if this exportation 

 had continued, Germany would have been brought 

 to that point that she would no longer have been 

 able to supply the demand of her own population 

 for corn. In many parts of Germany, from which 

 formerly large quantities of bone were exported, it 

 has now already come to be tbe case that those 

 bones must be at a much higher price brought 

 back again in the form of guano, in order to obtain 

 the paying crops of former times. 



" The exportation of bones for so many years 

 from Germany was possible only because the Ger- 

 man agriculturists had less knowledge of the real 

 nature of their business than the English, believing 

 as they did that practice and science taught doc- 

 trines contradictory to each other, and were funda- 

 mentally different things, and that they must trust, 

 not in the laws of nature, but in receipts. Things 

 have now changed for the better, although not to 

 the extent which was to be desired, for the German 

 farmers do not as yet generally understand the 

 value of the elements of bones for preserving the 

 present fertility of their fields (not to speak of the 

 restoration of their former fertihty), for if they all 

 understood this, no one would sell any more bones 

 — at all events, no more than those which he brings 

 to market in his grain and cattle. 



" If the common ' sewerage system' is retained, 

 then the imported manures, guano and bones, make 

 their way into the sewers of the cities, which, like a 

 bottomless pit, have for centuries swallowed up the 

 guano elements of the English fields, and after a 

 series of years the land will find itself precisely in 

 the condition it was before the importation of guano 

 and bones commenced ; and after England shall 

 have robbed the cultivated lands of Europe even 

 to complete exhaustion, and taken from them the 



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