50 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



lishments. The Royal Commissioners recommend a general 

 law by which this expense would be obviated. No other 

 system shows such a growth. If land can be found in Eng- 

 land for this purpose, it ought not be difficult to find it here. 

 Our farmers would strive for the privilege of sharing in the 

 advantages when the demonstration was made, as has been 

 the case at Gennevilliers, where the experimental farm of 

 Paris was described as "appearing like an oasis in the 

 desert." 



The encouragement of the cultivation of timber, where 

 sewage may be discharged w^ithout expensive preparation, 

 would result in great advantages to the State. Within half 

 a mile of Natick, and bordering on Lake Cochituate, are 

 sixty acres of sprout land. It has a geological formation, 

 which could not be improved for the employment of irriga- 

 tion, and here the sewage of the town and Pegan Brook 

 might be utilized. 



Boston is char<?ed with the care of the sewao^e of the 

 Mystic Valley. She owns five acres of sandy soil, where 

 is located a pumping station, and here, with little expense, 

 the practicability of the system might be demonstrated, and 

 the city and State probably be saved the necessity of con- 

 structing a metropolitan sewer to discharge in tide-water, 

 the cost of which has been variously estimated from thirteen 

 to eighty millions of dollars, and which would be, with the 

 experience of London before us, of very doubtful success, 

 to say the least. 



The Chairman. I will ask Mr. Edson, of Barnstable, to 

 open the discussion of this important subject. 



Mr. Nathan Edson, of Barnstable. We have been very 

 highly entertained and instructed by the lecturer. This 

 question of the disposal of sewage is one of the important 

 questions of our civilization. We dwellers in New England, 

 in passing across the State of Massachusetts, must see abund- 

 ant evidence of the deterioration of the land. Farms are 

 run out and deserted. Farms are only kept up to a high 

 state of fertility by a large expenditure of money, used in 

 the purchase of manures. At the same time a vast amount 

 of fertilizing material is passing ofi" into the rivers — irre- 



