274 POUDRETTE — HUMAN EXCREMENTS. 



the com is grown, because the conditions required for 

 the production of corn bemg thus always returned to the 

 soil, would continue to circulate and yet always remain 

 the same.* 



What is said here about the corn-constituents apphes, 

 of course, equally to the constituents of meat and vege- 

 tables, which, returned to the field, will reproduce as 

 much meat and vegetable matter as has been consumed. 

 The same relation that exists between the inhabitants of 

 the barracks in Baden and the fields supplying them with 

 bread, exists equally between the inhabitants of towns 

 and the country around. If it were practicable to col- 

 lect, without the least loss, all the solid and fluid excre- 

 ments of all the inhabitants of towns, and to return to 

 each farmer the portion arising from the produce 

 originally supplied by him to the town, the productive- 

 ness of his land might be maintained almost unimpaired 

 for ages to come, and the existing store of mineral 

 elements in every fertile field would be amply sufficient 

 for the wants of the increasing populations. At any 

 rate, that store is, at present, still sufficient to do so, 

 although the number of farmers who take care to cover 

 by an adequate supply of suitable manures the loss of 

 mineral matters sustained by the land in the crops grown 

 on it, is but small in proportion to the whole agricul- 

 tural population. However, sooner or later, the time 

 mil come when the deficiency in the store of these 



* Wlien, some years ago, an order was suddenly issued by the 

 authorities of the city of Carlsruhe, to deodorise and disinfect the pits 

 and cesspools -with sulphate of iron, before being emptied, the farmers 

 refused at first to pay any longer for the contents, which they argued were 

 by this treatment deprived of their fertilising virtue. Experience has 

 shown that this is not the case, and the disinfected dung commands as 

 high a price now as the article in its pure state did formerly. The dung 

 in the privy carts requires no disinfecting. 



