UTILIZATION OF SEWAGE. 51 



trievably lost to agriculture. Wc have very little idea of 

 the amount of this enormous loss. Let us stop and esti- 

 mate it for a moment. We will take the population of this 

 countr}^ at fifty millions. Let us see how much is consumed 

 at a single breakfast. We will allow four ounces of meat 

 and four ounces of bread, or its equivalent, to each individ- 

 ual. That is a quarter of a pound of meat for each of the 

 fifty millions; — 12,500,000 pounds of meat for a single 

 breakfast. Put it into bullocks of a thousand pounds ; — 

 12,500 bullocks at one single meal. There would be five 

 barrels of flour for each bullock, or 62,500 barrels of flour 

 at a single meal. The most of that is lost as an element of 

 fertility. We are an extravagant and wasteful nation, but 

 in no thing are we so wasteful as we are in the fertility of 

 our soils. In all our large cities, which consume a great 

 portion of this food, it is passed into rivers or directly into 

 the sea. It is a cause of pollution or is lost forever. In 

 the country it is not much better. We dig our privy vaults 

 in a porous soil, and the liquid contaminates the springs and 

 streams, and a great portion of it passes ofi" into the air. 



We farmers in the country cannot control the sewage of 

 cities, but we can control our own sewage by a little 

 forethought. A few cart loads of dry earth deposited some- 

 where near the house and used freely in the privy vault, in 

 the pig pen, and in the sink drain, will make us twenty 

 loads of strong fertilizer, with a family of eight persons, 

 worth twenty dollars. It is not a great amount. But we 

 have four millions of farmers. Four times twenty are 

 eighty. There are eighty millions of dollars that might be 

 saved to the country. And not only saved once, but twice. 

 It would be saved in keeping up the fertility of the soil and 

 saved in doctor's bills ; saving the water and air from 

 contamination. 



This can be done. There are very few, however, who do 

 it. I am very glad to have heard this essay, and I hope 

 it will at least set us thinking about this matter. The whole 

 wealth of the country lies in the soil. Our population is 

 increasing at the rate of about three per cent, a year, and 

 we are diminishing the value of the soil about in the same 



