THE MANURE HEAP AND SEWAGE. I 23 



stand only a certain amount of water and, when the dilution 

 of the sewage is great, it is impossible to use enough of it to 

 obtain much advantage from its contained nitrogen. This is 

 especially true of sewage in the United States where our cities 

 are very extravagant in the use of water. A given volume of 

 American sewage does not contain anything like the amount 

 of fertilizing material found in the same volume of English 

 or German sewage. As a result, sewage farming is not 

 applicable to the conditions in America and such farms have 

 not been established. So dilute is American sewage that 

 scarcely better results can be obtained with it than with an 

 equal amount of water. Lastly it is usually quite impossible 

 to find in the neighborhood of large cities land sufficient to 

 utilize their great amount of sewage. Sewage must, therefore, 

 be commonly considered as a purely waste material and some 

 means devised for getting rid of it. Sewage as a means of crop 

 fertilizing does not offer, at least to American farmers, any very 

 promising source of wealth. 



The very great bulk of sewage, rendering sewage farming 

 inadequate, has necessitated the adoption of some other method 

 of its disposal. Where a community is in the vicinity of the 

 ocean its sewage is naturally poured into the sea, a process which 

 results in the contamination of the harbors around the cities and 

 is certainly objectionable. In other cases it is poured into a 

 stream or river and carried off by the natural drainage system 

 of the country. This method is even more objectionable and 

 is becoming intolerable. The pollution of streams in this way 

 has become so serious in recent years that it has been abso- 

 lutely necessary to discover some method of dealing with sew- 

 age, and the governments of states have been forced to take it 

 into consideration. Many of the smaller streams have become 

 badly contaminated by city sewage. The significance of this 

 is evident. These streams must serve in many cases as the 

 water supply of a farm or even a city, and the increasing con- 



