CARE OF MANURES. 121 



gases, the carbon, sulphur and phosphorus, all the alkalies 

 and all the earths and metals, are not only found in the 

 substance of the different parts of the human body, in 

 the bones, the brain, the flesh, the tendons, the skin, and 

 the delicate humors between them, but they are all found 

 in those substances which have formed a part of the 

 human body or have been within it, and have been cast 

 out, after having performed their necessary and beneficent 

 offices. 



Now all these substances, literally the concentrated 

 essence of soils, of vegetable and of animal organization, 

 arc usually thrown away and lost. If restored to the 

 soil, they would more effectually renew it, and restore its 

 fertility than all other manures and amendments put 

 together, and yet they are allowed to escape and to be 

 utterly wasted. And not only are they wasted and lost. 

 Substances which, if properly preserved and husbanded, 

 would render fertile as a garden the neighborhood of all 

 great towns and cities, and would keep up the fertility of 

 all the farms throughout the country, are now allowed to 

 flow away into drains and sewers and to poison the atmos 

 phere of towns and the waters of the rivers. There is 

 scarcely any other instance of so enormous a waste. 

 Chiefly in consequence of this waste, the farms, in all the 

 older parts of the country, are becoming, or are already 

 become, far less productive than they originally were. 

 Even in those parts of New York and of the West that 

 have been longest settled, though all recently settled, the 

 fields are already losing their fertility from the same cause. 



393. What means ought to be employed to prevent this 

 waste? Economy, as well as regard for cleanliness and 

 health, demands that measures should everywhere be 

 taken to save all these substances, of every kind, liquid 



