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peasant is quite aware that the rain falling upon 

 his dung -heaps washes away a great many silver 

 dollars, and that it would be much more profit- 

 able to him to have on his fields what now poisons 

 the air of his house and the streets of his village ; 

 but he looks on unconcerned, and leaves matters 

 to take their course, because they have always gone 

 on in the same way." 



Food- stuffs worth 730 crores are, we have esti- 

 mated, annually consumed by the Indian popula- 

 tion, being entirely the produce of India's soil ; 

 and more than 20 crores of rupees was the income 

 Government realized in 1875 as land-revenue. 

 The mineral constituents of all these food-stuffs 

 have been wasted for centuries, and are irrecoverably 

 lost to the soil, which has received virtually nothing 

 in return for all it gave, and the total loss which 

 the Indian Empire and the commonwealth of its 

 people have suffered in consequence up to the 

 present time must be stupendous. 



The careful restoration of human refuse to the 

 soil, such as is practised in China and Japan, would 

 have the effect of annually returning to the soil a 

 quantity of fertilizing matter suificient to raise a 

 crop worth 730 crores'of rupees, f while non-restora- 

 tion would, on the contrary, result in so much loss 

 to the commonwealth. The Times, in an article 

 on the River Pollution Commission and on 



