268 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



solve it. Desolating epidemics, like the Plague, Yel- 

 low Fever, and the Cholera, will often visit our great 

 cities, and decimate their people, unless means can 

 be found to cleanse them wholly and incessantly of 

 whatever tends to pollute and render noisome their 

 atmosphere. 



SEWAGE is the term used in England to designate 

 water which, having been slightly impregnated with 

 the feculence and ordure of a city or village, is 

 diffused over a farm or farms adjacent, in order to im- 

 part at once fertility and moisture to its soil. To 

 secure an equable and thorough dissemination of 

 Sewage, it is essential that the land to which it is ap- 

 plied, if not originally level or nearly so, shall bo 

 brought into such condition that the impregnated 

 water may be applied to its entire surface, and shall 

 thence settle into, moisten, and fertilize, each cubic 

 inch of the soil. This involves a very considerable 

 initial outlay ; but the luxuriance of the crops unfail- 

 ingly produced, under the influence of this vivifying 

 irrigation, abundantly justifies and rewards that out- 

 lay. 



As yet, the application of Sewage is in its infancy ; 

 since the perfect and total conversion of all that a 

 great city excretes into the most available food for 

 plants, requires not only immense mains and res- 

 ervoirs, with a costly network of distributing dykes 

 or ditches, but novel appliances in engineering, and 

 a large investment of time as well as money. Years 

 must yet elapse before all the excretions of a great 



