57 
There are large manufactories of clothes and sweeping brooms in New 
York and Massachusetts, and the product of the broom-corn is always 
a marketable article. Some estimate may be made of the protit arising 
from the cultivation of broom-corn, from the reports made by the farm- 
ers of Massachusetts and New York to their respective agricultural 
societies, aS the same are published in their annual transactions. 
The value of the crop is reported by the Massachusetts Agricultural 
Society as follows: 
Teles sien en HOU El CONOR. HSU Sh ML. oe Se deltece wee Po isedeececs Sues $81 13 
Ss) bushelsvofiseed: at 45)conts to .2l6)) eden eee eke eek Se OK 39 60 
120 72 
Expenses: 
LUN SGUE ey Ned Se a a, ee Eien Ace PR SCRE ge ae SES St $10 00 
Mowing anep latins (52322 pedees eke lakes eles ls seh ack aewisei. 3 00 
Cultivating, harvesting, and taking of seed.-.-...- aes secGecisebersseek 18 00 
TUTE HESS) cy 0 a el Ae gS gi a caf a ae a A I aa 
40 00 
NGb PrOlh On ONG ALC.) a5 sexjcuu spacer beu. eames! taeld. Bice sl OTe 
PURIFICATION OF SEWAGE.—Dr. Carpenter, in a paper read before 
the British ‘‘Association of Medical Officers of Health,” states that infil- 
tration of sewage through. soil will eliminate all organic matter, and 
perfectly purify it. But the power of the soil is limited. It becomes 
saturated, and, instead of purifying the sewage, pollutes it still further 
by infusing the organic débris left by previous infiltrations. But if the 
filter is changed and the soil allowed to sun-dry and come in contact 
with fresh air, the organic débris itself is oxidized and transformed into 
harmless salts, which, on subsequently passing the sewage through the 
filter, will be carried off, leaving the filter itself free from its previous 
contamination. This is the principle on which rests the new process of 
downward, intermittent filtration. These salts are carried off into the 
sea, and consequently lost to agriculture. 
To prevent this waste it is proposed to take up these organic débris in 
the filtering soil by vegetation. Instead of the chemical power of the at- 
mosphere, the vital power of the plant should be brought into requisition 
to remove this refuse matter, and to bring it back by its circuitous process 
into the soil. In 1868 the speaker had showed how the rootlets of rye-grass 
seized upon the organic elements of the sewage, without reducing them 
to chemical salts, and immediately utilized them in plant-growth. He 
maintained, contrary to common opinion, that it was not necessary that 
the organic refuse should be reduced to inorganic elements prior to re- 
absorption in vegetation. He cites, in support of his position, the ex- 
periments of Dr. Sanderson, and the declaration of Dr. Hooker, of the 
Royal Gardens at Kew, before the British Association, at its late session 
in Belfast, that “plants can and do assimilate animal matter without 
that animal matter being first resolved into its ultimate elements.” 
Dr. Carpenter claims to have established the capacity of the protoplasm 
of rye-grass, as‘existing in the minute spongioles of the root, to absorb and 
assimilate organic matter without first decomposing it into its inorganic 
elements. At the extreme end of the rootlet, the root-cap, as it is called, 
consists of cells which attract this organic matter, and which, after hav- 
ing passed the nitrogenous elements to the vascular system of the 
plant, become saturated with the residuary oxygen or carbonic acid and 
separate from the plant, their work being done. Animal manure, espe- / 
cially that derived from carnivorous or omnivorous animals, embraces 
two classes of matter; first, that in which all vitality has been destroyed 
