MANURES. 



MANURES. 



carriages of a peculiar construction ; the ex- 

 tent and completeness of the sewerage of our 

 large cities, and several other minor obstacles, 

 have rendered its use not nearly so extensive 

 as, even in a national point of view, is desira- 

 ble. (See NIGHT-SOIL.) And yet the neces- 

 sity for increasing the supplies of manures, in 

 order to promote the fertility of the soil, will be 

 self-evident to every one who remembers, not 

 only the increasing population of the country, 

 but the immense drains upon its organic fer- 

 tilizing matters which are hourly pouring their 

 contents into the sea. Thus, as I have else- 

 where remarked, by carefully-conducted expe- 

 riment it has been clearly ascertained that the 

 principal London drains convey daily into the 

 Thames 115,000 tons of mixed manure, con- 

 sisting, on an average composition, of one part 

 solid or mechanically suspended matter, and 

 25 parts absolutely fluid; but if we allow only 

 1 part in 30 of this immense mass to be com- 

 posed of solid substances, than we have the large 

 quantity of more than 3800 tons of solid manure 

 daily wasted in the river from London alone. 

 What might not the farmers of England effect 

 if this mass of fertilizing matter was preserved, 

 at a reasonable rate, for their use ] 15 tons of 

 this solid manure nay, 10 tons, would render 

 fertile an acre of the poorest cultivated, or even 

 common or heath land. But allow, for the 

 sake of argument, that 20 tons were required, 

 even then 3800 would give a daily allowance 

 of manure sufficient for 180 acres of the poor- 

 est land in England ; and if we give 300 days 

 on which this manure was collected, that 

 would afford an annual supply for fifty-four 

 tiiotis.tiid of tuck acres, which land would not 

 again need manuring for 4 years; and in this 

 calculation nothing is allowed for the fluid por- 

 tion of the drainage. It is the reckless waste 

 of the drainage of our large cities and towns, 

 which has alone prevented the cultivated lands 

 of England from becoming increasingly fer- 

 tile, because yearly more abounding in organic 

 decomposing matters. For such is the enor- 

 mous yearly import of foreign products into 

 this country, that it must tend to rapidly in- 

 crease the natural fertility of the soil of Eng- 

 land, since all their ingredients ought and do, 

 in some measure, eventually find their way as 

 a manure upon the land; thus, in 1834, were 

 imported into the United Kingdom, according 

 to a parliamentary report, now before me, of 



CwU. qri. Ihs. 



So that, including corn, oil-cake, timber, &c., 

 &c., at least 1,000,000 tons of vegetable matters 

 alone are yearly imported from foreign coun- 

 tries into the United Kingdom, and added to 

 the riches of the soil: thus our merchants are 

 annually fertilizing, while the Comnrissioners ' 



of Sewers are in an equal ratio impoverishing 



the island. But against this great fertilizing 



import, we have at present to set off the large 



and ever-flowing drainage of the cities and 



towns of the United Kingdom; not only Lon- 



| don, but Liverpool, Manchester, and a hundred 



others, are incessantly pouring the riches of 



the land into the sea; and to such an extent is 



this done at Bristol, that the Court of King's 



! Bench was obliged, not long since, tc interfere 



to protect the inhabitants from the nuisance 



created by the non-removal of the city drain- 



j age from the bed of the Avon. 



On the Continent, the use of various manure 

 ! powders made from night-soil is equally ex- 

 tensive and successful. An elaborate report 

 upon these was made a short time since to the 

 Directors of the Thames Improvement Com- 

 pany, by Dr. Granville, who had been commis- 

 sioned to make the requisite inquiries and 

 surveys; and from this we learn that the con- 

 sumption of night-soil in Flanders is very 

 large ; but that the farmers, instead of employ- 

 ing it in the dry or powdered state, rather pre- 

 fer to mix it with water, and thus form a rich 

 liquid manure. Of late years, the French 

 fanners have adopted the same views with re- 

 gard to night-soil; but the practice of their 

 farmers, in this respect, is somewhat different. 

 They prefer, for the sake of easy and conve- 

 nient transport, to dry the stercoral substances 

 to powder, which, bearing the name of poudrette, 

 is sent into the country from the neighbour- 

 hood of the capital, and is sold at a high price 

 The success of the establishment for the manu 

 facture of poudrette, first formed near Paris 

 about 40 years since, by a person named Bri- 

 det, has been such that in almost every part of 

 the kingdom similar manufactories have been 

 erected, and nothing now is wasted. The Pari 

 sians have at present several such large works. 

 M. Bridet obtained a patent for his process of 

 manufacturing the poudre vegetqtif. He proved, 

 by experiments, that the poudrette is many 

 times more valuable than the best sort of ordi- 

 nary manure. It was found, after repeated 

 trials, that 240 Ibs. of the poudrette would ma- 

 nure an acre of ground with greater effect than 

 8 cart-loads of the best stable manure. 



Under the name of "Alkaline-vegetative 

 Powder," another preparation of night-soil was 

 ushered into notice in France, and generally 

 adopted, under the auspices of an agricultural 

 lady, Madame Vivert Duboul, to whom, in con- 

 sequence, the Royal Society of Agriculture, in 

 1814, awarded their gold medal. This lady 

 obtained a patent of 15 years for her process, 

 which consisted in promoting fermentation in 

 the most liquid portion of the excrementitious 

 substances, and treating them with slaked lime 

 afterwards, so as to form a powder, which has 

 been found to be very superior to the first 

 lamed poudrette upon cold, light, or moist soils. 

 [ts action is very powerful, and it extends its 

 'nfluence over the soil for several years with- 

 out requiring, during that period, a repetition 

 of the manuring process. This is not the case 

 with the poudrette of Bridet, the influence of 

 which over any soil is only annual "M. 

 Hermstadt gave, in the Monthly Journal uf the 

 Economic Society of Potsdam, for August, '839 



779 



