412 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



source of my wealth ; that which has fed my cattle shall now 

 feed my crops ; that which has given fatness to my flocks shall 

 now give fatness to my fields.&quot; A mysterious power is ever 

 operating in every department of nature ; suffering nothing to 

 fail of its use ; &quot; gathering up the fragments, that nothing be 

 lost ; &quot; and providing for the various wants of the infinitely 

 varied forms of life to which existence has been given, and from 

 which, if the Creator should, for one second, withdraw his guar 

 dian care, the whole must instantly perish. 



The refuse of a city may be considered as of at least five 

 different kinds ; first, the ordinary refuse of a house, such as 

 fragments of vegetables, remains of food, bones, rags, and a 

 thousand miscellaneous and nameless substances ; second, the 

 remains of fuel, such as ashes and soot ; third, the refuse of dif 

 ferent trades, of workers in leather, workers in bone, workers in 

 horn, soap-boilers, glue manufacturers, workers in hair arid in 

 wool, sugar refineries, and the innumerable other trades always 

 to be found in the busy hive of a city ; fourthly, the dung of the 

 domestic animals, cows and horses ; and lastly, human ordure or 

 night-soil. I shall say little of some other substances which 

 have been used for purposes of manure ; but it is well known 

 that many graveyards have been ransacked for the purpose of 

 gathering up their mouldering relics, and that many hundreds 

 of tons of human bones have been transported from the field of 

 Waterloo to England for the purpose of enriching the cultivation. 

 It cannot be denied in this case to be a more rational, humane, 

 and, I will add, Christian use, than that to which they w r ere put 

 in the bloody arena, where they were first deposited. 



In Paris, every species of refuse is husbanded in the most care 

 ful manner. No refuse is allowed to be thrown into the streets 

 after a very early hour in the morning, nor until after ten o clock 

 at night. This refuse consists of what may be called the house- 

 dirt, and is laid in heaps in front of the houses near the gutters. 

 A very numerous class of people, called chijfonnicrs, consisting 

 of as many women as men, with deep baskets on their backs, 

 and a small stick with a hook at the end, carefully turn over 

 every one of these heaps, selecting from them every article of 

 bone, leather, iron, paper, and glass, which are thrown at once 

 into their baskets, and, being carried to their places of general 

 deposit, are there again examined and assorted, and appropriated 



