236 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



" In countries where the thing has been tried it has been found 

 " that the annual evacuations of a well-fed man suffice to manure 

 *' half an acre of ground, and their fertilizing value may be safely 

 " stated at $5. Indeed, if put into a suitable form as regards 

 *' dryness and texture, they would compete with our standard 

 " fertilizers at twice this sum. We are told, in fact, that formerly 

 *' they were valued at $9 gold, in Flanders, and it is hardly to be 

 " supposed that they have fallen in estimation. 



" The writer has it from undoubted authority that the Chinese 

 " agriculturists near Fuh Chau will give a day's work for ten 

 " gallons of urine, and it is well understood that the teeming 

 " population of China and Japan could not subsist if they wasted 

 '' this means of enriching the soil, as do we and most other of the 

 " ' barbarians ' west of the Celestial and Flowery kingdoms. 



" If it be true that the value of the waste in question amounts 

 *' to but one-third of the sum above named per head annually for 

 " the entire population, old and young, then not less than $80,000 

 "is every year lost to New Haven j for of all this treasure next 

 "to nothing is ever saved, on account of its excessive proneness 

 " to decomposition. To economize this fertilizer it must either 

 " be used after no long interval, as is the Chinese practice, or it 

 " must be dried and disinfected when perfectly fresh. All at- 

 " tempts to accomplish this result by manufacturing or chemical 

 " processes, involving carriage of the fresh material, have signally 

 " failed. 



" The means of satisfying at once all demands of sanitary 

 " science and of agriculture is, however, fortunately everywhere at 

 " hand, and of extreme simplicity and cheapness in its application. 

 " Dry and fine earth is the material. 



" This property of earth is no new discovery. Its use was 

 "prescribed to the Israelites, (Deuteronomy xxiii. 12, 13,) and is 

 " turned to good account by the instincts of our domestic car- 

 "nivorae. The Rev. Henry Moule, an English clergyman, was 

 " the first to elaborate, by a careful study of the subject, a plan 

 " for the systematic employment of earth for this purpose. In 

 "1858 he published a pamphlet entitled * National Health and 



