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the importance of human fertilizers, expresses 

 itself as follows : 



" Every well-wisher to England, who reflects upon the 

 great sewage question and its present condition, must feel 

 humiliated by our national and willing helplessness and 

 shortcomings as regards the disposal and utilization of this 

 our vast food-producing treasure. The blundering from 

 beginning to end has been immense. Our sanitary reform- 

 ers, in their laudable^ desire to preserve our health, 

 abolished our cesspools, poisoned our rivers, and deprived 

 us of the only cheap and effective means for fertilizing 

 our fields and filling our stomachs. 



" A jury of Chinamen would pronounce us guilty 

 of suicidal insanity, for in China their 400 millions 

 of people depend mainly on human sewage for the pro- 

 duction of their food ; they do not, like us, purchase bird's 

 dung from Peru, or import the antiquated dust and ashes 

 of foreign men and animals. Every one in Britain 

 believes in the sheepfold, but about the manfold, which is 

 superior in its effects and results, there has been complete 

 iapathy." 



No elaborate and expensive schemes, no extra- 

 ordinary ingenuity, is required to make the utiliza- 

 tion of human fertilizers practicable. It has been 

 brought to perfection in China and Japan, and I have 

 no doubt that a careful study of the method adopted 

 in those countries could enable us to introduce it 

 into India without any considerable alterations. 



In villages and small towns especially, the con- 

 servation of all refuse matter for agricultural pur- 



