THE 



GARDENER. 



MAY 1870. 



PLANTS AS SANITARY AGENTS. 



HIS important point has just been put prominently for- 

 ward in a thoughtful paper read by Mr William Ingram, 

 gardener to the Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle, before the 

 Leicester Museum, in which, with much felicity of illus- 

 tration, he made manifest the action of certain laws affecting the decay 

 of animal life, the consequent existence of impurities, and the necessity 

 for their removal ; and the further necessity for the corrective activity 

 of vegetation as an important part assigned to plants in the great 

 system of nature as sanitary agents. In the course of this address Mr 

 Ingram pointed out the "great array of polluting forces" operating 

 on the earth, and touched chiefly on animal life as a great polluting 

 power. This it accomplishes in the continued residence of man and 

 beast on the earth, in that matters corrupt and offensive are deposited, 

 which, having " once formed part and parcel of the animal economy, 

 cannot be applied again without infecting with their inherent corruption 

 any living animal that may again absorb them ; and also from the fact, 

 that on the heels of decaying and dead animal life " treads decomposi- 

 tion ; the dead matter that has once lived is distributed anew, and the 

 fragments pollute the air, the water, or the earth." But in the opera- 

 tion of that wise economy that clothes all nature as with a garment 

 of beneficent compensating services, vegetation interposes, and 



" Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 

 Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again ; 

 And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 

 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 

 To mix for ever with the elements, 

 N 



