28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Afternoon Session. 



The Board re-assembled at two o'clock, and the Chairman 

 introduced as the first speaker, Henry J. Barnes, M. D., 

 of Boston. 



UTILIZATION OF SEWAGE. 



BY HENRY J. BARNES, M. D. 



In 1864 Mr. Darwin E. Ware addressed the Essex Agri- 

 cultural Society on the utilization of the sewage of cities. 

 "The subject (he says) has vital relations to the progress 

 of civib'zation. Throuofh the sewers of cities discharsring 

 into the ocean the highest properties of the soil are irrecov- 

 erably lost. The turbid currents of the North River, the 

 Thames and the Seine are richer than Pactolus with its sands 

 of gold. For that which is pollution to their waters is the 

 touch of magic to the fields, and the power of food for suc- 

 cessive generations of men The invention of a plan 



by which the slime and sediment of cities can be trans- 

 formed into corn and wheat, gives scope for one of the most 

 beneficial systems of economy yet devised." 



Liebig says of the cloaca of Rome discharging in the 

 Tiber : — " It swallowed up in a few hundred years all that, 

 could make the Roman peasantry prosperous, and when 

 their fields were no longer able to produce the necessaries 

 of life for the Roman people, then were the riches of Sicily, 

 Sardinia, and the fertile coasts of Africa irretrievably sunk 

 in this cloaca.''^ 



*'The value of this material as a fertilizer is obvious, 

 but it has been comparatively estimated, and put beyond 

 controversy by the experiments of the Prussian government 

 reclaiminsr lands with the sewao:e of Dresden and Berlin. 

 Land which without an}' application yielded but three for one 

 of seed sown, and seven for one when treated with the 

 ordinary resources of the farm-yard, yielded fourteen for 

 one when fertilized by sewage." 



Gen. N. N. Halstcd read a paper before this Board in 



