146 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



have been polluted, and thus made the vehieles of disease to those on 

 their borders. 



From Paris and from many other cities of Western Europe similar 

 complaints have reached us. Prevalence of typhus, of cholera, of epi- 

 demic diarrhea, and of other zymotic diseases have been traced directly 

 to the defective methods of disposing of the waste matters which accu- 

 mulate to such an extent in all cities and towns of any considerable 

 magnitude as to soon become an intolerable nuisance. " There is but 

 little doubt that the plague which in other years desolated the great 

 cities of the world — " the pestilence that walketh in darkness" — was 

 really nothing more than the legitimate result of an utter disregard of 

 cleanliness and other sanitary conditions. 



This subject has a very interestiog history, and one that would be 

 very instructive, had we time and space to develop it. Perhaps the 

 most ancient regulation concerning this matter is found in the wise 

 sanitary provision of the Hebrew lawgiver, (Dent, xxiii, 12, 13;) but in 

 most of the ancient cities, the only provision for disposiug of waste 

 matter was to consume it by fire, as in the tires of Hiuuon at Jerusalem 

 and the fiery furnace at Babylon. In Egypt, the wastes were annually 

 carried away by the inundation of the Nile, or covered up by the 

 deposits from its turbid waters. 



Kome led the way in making provision for carrying off the wastes of 

 the city by subterranean sewers. The Cloaca Maxima, built by Tar- 

 quin about six hundred years before our era, was the first experiment in 

 this line, and has hardly been excelled since. This ancient work was 

 cleaned, repaired, and greatly extended by Agrippa in the reign of the 

 Emperor Augustus. He turned the waters of the aqueducts through 

 the sewers, hoping thus to secure the cleanliness of the city, but only 

 succeeded in poisonhig the Tiber and rendering the villas along its 

 shores almost uninhabitable. The example of Home has been very 

 generally followed by modern cities, with substantially the same results. 

 London began the construction of her system of sewei's in the year 

 1225, and has been extending that system as the wants of the city from 

 time to time appeared to demand. Paris began the great work, which 

 literally makes that city stand on a'rches, about two centuri<?s later than 

 London, but her sewers are said now to be the most perfect in the world. 

 Yet neither Eome, London, nor Paris, nor indeed any other city, 

 European or American, has succeeded in establishing the sanitary con- 

 dition at which they aimed, and to secure Avhich these enormo^TS expend- 

 itures were made. But their failure was to bo expected, for there is 

 the violation of a natural law lying back of all this — a law, the disre- 

 gard of which, has led to the failure of every attempt to establish a fa- 

 vorable sanitary condition in cities by means of subterranean sewers. It 

 is the law of compensation — the law by which the wise Creator proposes 

 to balance consumption and production. In her economy, nature makes 

 no provision for losses, but proposes to utilize everything. Wherever 

 there is a nuisance, therefore, some law of nature is viohited — some- 

 thing is out of place. To feed and clothe populous cities, a constant tlraft 

 is made on the elements of fertility in fields near by or remote, for 

 which the cities make no return. Can these fields, however fertile, con- 

 tinue to feed and clothe the millions of the cities and yet not feel the 

 exhaustive drain "^ 



The decadence of nations and the downfall of empires are more deeply 

 involved in this law of compensation than «political philosophers and 

 statesmen have apprehended. No nation has long survived her ability 

 to feed and clothe her x^eox^le from the production of her own soil, nor 



