322 Extracts from the Journals. [Oct., 



With the view of bettering themselves, they venture, at all haz- 

 ards, amidst the poisonous exhalation:^ of the neighborhood. By 

 and bye they are visited by distempers; and as they are honest 

 and sober citizens, having no uneasy conscience to reproach 

 them for their sins, they piously consider the affliction as a mo- 

 nition from heaven to try their virtue. Their sense of constancy 

 and firmness forbids them to fly from the scourge of the Lord, 

 and thus they religiously stick to the infected spot ! What is the 

 true interpretation of such conduct, but that both the farmer and 

 the trader, obstinately persisting in the means of self-destruction, 

 are guilty of a sort of suicide 1 



It is a fact, long ago established, that great cities are the 

 graves of the human species. It is a truth of almost equal im- 

 portance, that the foul habitations of country people are nurse- 

 ries of pestilential distempers. The street manures of cities con- 

 sist of pretty much the same mateiials with the yard manure 

 collected about farm houses. But are unhealthy for a similiar 

 reason. The costly exertions of the cit, to amass septic materials 

 of all kinds, and from all quarters, to found his building upon, 

 amounts to the same thing with the supineness of the ru.stic 

 sluggard, who neglects to remove them from his door. 



If further proof was wanting of the real nature of these ma- 

 nures, it would be easy to state, that, besides the affinity of septic 

 compounds with water, they have a strong attraction for other 

 bodies. With potash and soda, of which large quantities are 

 daily poured into the streets with the soap suds employed in 

 washing, and from other sources, the septic acid for the septites 

 of potash, (common salt-petre) and of soda (cubic nitre). With 

 lime, which, from measuring, carting and building, is sprinkled 

 plentifully along the streets, as well as in the moitar of walls 

 and the cielings of rooms, it form the septic of lime (calcarious 

 nitre). And with clay it forms the septite of argil, (nitrite of 

 alumine). By these several ways are pestilential vapors kept 

 down and prevented from exercising their deadly effects upon 

 animals, except in cases where they are produced in quantity too 

 great for the enumerated substances, and others with which they 

 have a proneness to combine, to attach and neutralize. 



2. There will be no great difhculty in showing, that septon 

 (azote) is one of the component materials of certain vegetables. 

 If it can be made evident what plants especially abound with it, 

 we shall be furnished with a clue, leading us to the true use of 

 the manures containing it. From an analysis of plants we have 

 become acquainted with several of their component paits, and 

 thence are enabled to form some judgment concerning the quali- 

 ties of the manure best adapted to such and such particular kinds. 

 There is good reason to believe, that particular manures ought to 



