V MANURES 69 



ordinary manure, especially in a fresh state, with the 

 soil immediately surrounding the roots. 



A very good authority recommends that, in planting, 

 the manure be applied in the fashion of a sandwich ; 

 that IS, I take it, manure below, then soil, then the 

 roots, then more soil, some manure over that, and the 

 soil again at the surface. The danger here, I think, 

 would be of either making the top layer of manure so 

 thin as to be nearly useless, or getting the roots too 

 deep. 



Top-dressings of brewers' grains, or other compounds, 

 are recommended by Dean Hole and other writers, but 

 I think that some of the above disadvantages would be 

 found connected with any one of them. 



Of solid manure not made up of straw, night-soil is 

 perhaps the most important. And as a strong believer 

 m the earth system I am tempted here to enlarge upon 

 the well worn theme of the folly of civilised mankind in 

 wasting immense quantities of manure, which they 

 spend large sums in replacing, by discharging it into the 

 rivers where it does untold harm instead of returning 

 it to the earth, as God commanded Moses, to the great 

 advantage of their health, their pockets, and their 

 gardens and fields. 



Science continues to show more and more, on the one 

 hand by the light it throws on the dissemination by 

 water of typhoid fever and cholera, and on the other by 

 the discovery of the purifying mission of the bacteria 

 in the surface soil, that earth is the best receptacle for 

 night-soil and water the worst. But after all the 

 earth system is not practicable in large towns, and is 

 troublesome to enforce in villages. 



There is naturally great difficulty in dealing satis- 

 factorily with night-soil as a manure for Ruses, and 



