60 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



end to know what to do. Grievous complaints are made, 

 that, after an expenditure of twenty millions of dollars, 

 they have still the same old nuisance in an aggravated 

 form. 



Another drawback we have had has come from the over- 

 sanguine expectations and assertions of theoretical men. I 

 suppose that one of the greatest failures that ever occurred 

 in England, or in the world, took place in consequence of a 

 letter written by Prof. Liebig, in which he demonstrated, as 

 he supposed, the value of sewage as a fertilizer. He made 

 an estimate of the number of chickens consumed in London 

 every year, the number of heads of cauliflower, the number 

 of bushels of potatoes, and so on, estimating the kind and 

 quantity of food used yearly in London. He determined 

 ■what the elements in that material were, and, basing his cal- 

 culation upon that, he estimated the money value of the fer- 

 tilizing elements of this sewage at ten millions of dollars a 

 year. Thereupon a multitude of adventurers sprang in with 

 their schemes to be the first to secure this nice plum. A 

 company was organized under the name of the Metropolis 

 Sewage and Essex Reclamation Company, if I remember 

 rightly, with a capital of ten millions of dollars. They pro- 

 posed to take this sewage down to what they call the Map- 

 lin Sands, on the seashore, to the north side of the mouth of 

 the river Thames, and, to show the value of this material, 

 they carried several barges full of this sanfl to the mouth of 

 the sewer, where they made a three-foot layer of sand, and 

 put the sewage upon it. They raised handsome crops of 

 grass ; the scheme looked wonderfully promising, and seemed 

 to indicate a large profit. People became interested, the stock 

 was subscribed for, and the company went on with its oper- 

 ations. After a series of experiments, extending over seven 

 or eight years, more or less, at an enormous expense, they 

 finally went to parliament and confessed that they had under- 

 estimated the cost of their works and over-estimated the 

 amount of return ; that their labors had ended in disappoint- 

 ment ; that they had sunk $1,300,000, and asked practically 

 that they might be disincorporated. That is the record of 

 a company which made the greatest efibrt hitherto made in 

 England to utilize this material, in order that they might 



