272 POUDRETTE — HUMAN EXCREMENTS. 



available food elements, and increase the costs of transport. 

 The privy pits, moreover, are but rarely water-tight, and 

 permit the greater part of the urine and other fluid 

 contents to leak away, thus causing the loss of a good 

 deal of the most valuable matter, such as the potash 

 salts, and the soluble phosphates. The following state- 

 ment will show the great value of the excrement of 

 man. In the fortress of Eastadt and in the soldiers' 

 barracks in Baden generally, the privies are so con- 

 structed that the seats open, through wide funnels, into 

 casks fixed upon carts. By this means the whole of the 

 excrements, both fluid and solid, are collected without 

 the least loss. Wlien the casks are fidl, they are replaced, 

 by empty ones.* 



The food of the soldier, in Baden, consists chiefly of 

 bread, but also of certain daily rations of meat and vege- 

 tables. As the body of an adult does not increase in 

 weight, it needs no particular calculation to make out 

 that the collected excrements must contain the ash-con- 

 stituents of the bread, meat, and vegetables, and also tlie 

 whole of the nitrogen of the food. 



To produce a pound of corn, the soil has to furnish 

 the ash-constituents of that pound of corn ; if we supply 



* The price of a cart is from 100 to 125 florins=£8 6s. M. to £10 8s. Ad. 

 It will last about five years. The original outlay incurred by the 

 Army administration in Baden, in 1856 and 1857, for the carts and 

 casks amounting to about £370, was speedily repaid out of the proceeds 

 of the manure. 



The collective number of the garrisons of Constance, Freiburg, 

 Eastadt, Carlsruhe, Bruchsal, and Mannheim, averages about 8000 men. 

 The receipts for manure sold Avere in 1852, £285 ; in 1853, £315 ; in 

 1854, £443; 1825, £400; 1856, £668; 1857, £668 ; 1858, £680 ; 

 £50 or £60 are to be deducted fi-om these receipts annually for cost 

 of maintenance, repair, &c., of the carts, &c. (' Journ. of the Agric. 

 Soc. of Bavaria,' AprU 1860. Page 180.) 



