266 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



product can be grown cheaper by its help than on 

 lands where irrigation is presumed unnecessary. 

 There are not many acres laid down to grass in New- 

 England, whether for hay or pasture, that would not 

 have justified an outlay of $10 per acre to secure 

 their thorough irrigation simply for this year alone. 



XLV. 



SEWAGE. 



THE great empires of antiquity were doomed to 

 certain decay and dissolution by a radical vice inhe- 

 rent in their political and social constitution. Power 

 rapidly built up a great capital, whereto population 

 was attracted from every quarter; and that capital 

 Became a focus of luxury and consumption. Grain, 

 Meat, and Yegetables the fat of the land and the 

 spoils of the sea were constantly absorbed by it in 

 enormous quantities ; while nothing, or, at best, very 

 little, was returned therefrom to the continually ex- 

 hausted and impoverished soil. Thus, a few ages, or 

 at most a few centuries, sufficed to divest a vast sur- 

 rounding district, first, of its fertility, ultimately of 

 its capacity for production. And so Nineveh, Thebes, 

 Babylon, successively ceased to be capitals, and be- 

 came ruins amid deserts. Rome impoverished Italy 



