18t Sewage and Sewerage. [ April, 
of the “dry method” in cumberousness and expense, it exceeds 
them all considerably in offensiveness. Mr. Menzies, however, shall 
describe its demerits for us:—‘ There is no doubt,’ he says at 
page 6, “that this affords the least complicated means of utilizing 
the sewage ; but the whole tendency of the people in this kingdom 
is towards cleanliness, and they will readily sacrifice what is apparently 
useful if anything so disagreeable as this is forced upon them. This 
system is carried out thoroughly in China and Japan; but its advocates 
admit that Kuropeans endure a martyrdom of smells in these coun- 
tries, while they forget that a vast amount of human labour in these two 
countries is the cheapest form of transport, while in Europe it is the 
dearest ; also that in Brita nothing is more studied or better un- 
derstood than engineermg and mechanical arrangements which 
involve the least outlay of either skilled or unskilled labour. Neither 
do the towns in China and Japan yield, like those in this country, 
vast quantities of horse manure, which is much more easily managed, 
and which by its abundance in the neighbourhood of large towns in 
England diminishes the agricultural value of sewage. Nor could 
this system of iron pans be adapted to dwelling-houses.” 
On the other hand, it is right to say that Sir Joseph Paxton, 
though, as a horticultural physiologist, he was fully aware that 
“plants could not take up solid manure in its crude form, the spon- 
gioles becoming ulcerated by contact with it, and that therefore 
an application in a diluted form was the application by which 
plants were best supplied,” did, in his evidence given before 
Dr. Brady’s committee (see Second Report, p. 17, 2,511), hint 
that mechanical science might one day make a removal in this 
way very possible, “without our ever knowing anything about 
it or having the slightest possible smell in the house.” “In 
the diluted form,” he proceeds to say, “it is very valuable, but 
in the solid form it would be commercially much more valuable.” 
The plan is employed in certain barracks in Germany and also at 
Glasgow.* The Japanese and Chinese are ordinarily taken as illus- 
trations of the success which may attend the adoption of this plan ; 
and we are far from thinking that we may not learn many valuable 
lessons from nations whose vast experience and urgent necessities 
must have forced upon them so many lessons of ingenuity and 
economy. ‘The Rev. Mr. Moule, indeed, of whom we shall have to 
speak again,t has recommended for adoption in English cottage 
architecture a plan of utilizing the heat of the fire in hollow house 
walls, the principle of which has for centuries been acted on by 
Chinese builders; but in this matter of the utilizing of sewage, 
we are inclined to think that the difference of our social conditions 
* See ‘Report Barrack Improvement Commission,’ p. 91, and figure in illus- 
tration. 
+ ‘Gardeners’ Chronicle, June 18, 1864. 
