Town Seioage. 229 



a very valuable property ;" but tbey forget that it is tbe agricultui'ist 

 who bas to decide wbat is its value. This is not a question of science 

 merely ; it is a question of practice with science ; and a man of science 

 cannot ensure that if you aj^ply certain ingredients to tbe soil, you 

 will be able to take off tbe anticipated crop. At Eugby we seldom 

 got more tban 1 ton of bay from 1000 tons of sewage, and according 

 to tbis we sbould require 4000 tons of tbe Eugby sewage to produce 

 4 tons of bay Of tbe London sewage, if it is found to be as diluted as 

 I estimate it to be, 6800 tons would be required for tbe same purpose, 

 altbougb Baron Liebig says tbat 2430 tons would be sufficient. 



Let us now consider for a moment tbe application of sewage on 

 arable land. Baron Liebig's view is tbis : " You agriculturists are," 

 be says, " great robbers ; you laiow notbing about yoiu- own business ; 

 you get oil-cakes and manures from all parts of tbe world, robbing 

 other soils, and at the same time you let all tbe sewage of London run 

 into tbe sea ; while robbing other soils you are impoverishing your 

 own ;" and, he goes on to say, " if you will only mix the sewage of the 

 metropolis daily with 275 tons of superphosphate of lime, or nearly 

 100,000 tons a year, you will have a manure just suited to arable land, 

 because on arable land you only take off part of the produce of tbe 

 soil ; while in the case of grass land, when you make yoiu" hay you take 

 it all away." In theory it may be all very well to say that you 

 sbould apply the sewage to arable land in such quantities as will 

 compensate the exhaustion due to tbe removal of corn ; but in practice 

 the thing is impossible. Examine the question with regard to phos- 

 phoric acid — one of tbe most important constituents to retm-n to the 

 soil — I estimate that if you were cultivating a farm on the foiu'- 

 course system, and removed from it 30 bushels of wheat and 35 

 bushels of barley per acre, and were to consume all the other crops 

 on the land, not purchasing cake or artificial maniu'cs, the waste thus 

 caused might be supplied by tbe application of 7 lbs. of pbosiDhoric 

 acid per acre per annum ; if you were to distribute tbe sewage of 

 London so as to balance such waste, you must distribute it over 

 eleven million acres, or about tbe whole quantity of arable land of 

 England. 



I believe tbe Corn and Coal Committee think tbat tbe sewage 

 of London sbould be distributed over an area of five or six bim- 

 tlred thousand acres. I do not know why tbat quantity has been 

 chosen ; but it would supply between foiu' and five hundred tons per 

 acre, which is not a very large dressing. To distribute even tbat 

 amount would require an enormous capital, and the thing would not 

 answer unless agriculturists could afford to pay 2cl. per ton. The 

 advocates of these schemes always speak of the price at which they 

 could afford to sell, instead of wbat the farmer could afford to give. 

 Now, tbe question is, could agricultiuists afford to give 2d. a ton for 

 sewage ? 



I know there are some who say tbat the Eugby experiments are 

 a complete failiu-e. Tbey say tbat we have converted the Eugby 

 land into a comj)lete swamp, though we have only used 3000 tons of 

 sewage in some places, GOOO in others, and 9000 in others. But it is 



