414 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



an honest living. All this refuse is transported to places appro 

 priated for its deposit, where it remains until it is decomposed, 

 and is then sold to the farmers for manure. 



CXXIV. NIGHT-SOIL. POUDRETTE. 



The disposal of the night-soil in Paris is a different affair, and 

 occupies a large class of persons. In the crowded parts of Lon 

 don and Paris, such an appurtenance to a house as an open yard 

 is not always to be looked for, and the houses are built in imme 

 diate contact with each other. The accommodations for the 

 family are necessarily within doors. In England there are 

 water-closets closing with a trap, and of most exemplary neat 

 ness. In Paris, with some exceptions, they are not water-closets, 

 but mere cabinets ; and from habitual neglect, which seems too 

 generally to prevail among the middle and lower classes, filling 

 the house with a detestable odor. In many of the houses in 

 the Scotch cities, and houses not always of an inferior descrip 

 tion, will it be believed, there are no accommodations of this sort 

 within or without doors ? The refuse of the family used to be 

 thrown from the windows at night, not always to the perfect 

 safety of the unwary passenger, and is now commonly carried 

 into the gutters in front of the houses, after ten o clock at night, 

 to be taken up by the night-carts in passing. Can it be surpris 

 ing that fever and disease annually remove a large portion of the 

 population of such places ? 



In London, this refuse passes off into the common sewer,* and 

 from thence mixes with the water of the Thames. It is calcu- 



* The extent of these sewers may be judged of from the fact, that one day in 

 London I saw a man emerging from an opening in Hay Street, near Berkeley 

 Square, with a bunch of candles in his hand, who told me he had travelled seven 

 miles under ground. The sewers are about five feet in height, and of a propor 

 tional width, being the segment of an oval with the bottom cut off, thus Q . This 

 probably was an exaggeration ; but it must require a good deal of courage to 

 have ventured even half that distance alone, although it is an undoubted fact, 

 that there are many persons in the habit of daily exploring the sewers, where 

 they sometimes find prizes of value. What an employment! 



