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taming, perpetually compensated, and lasting fertility. The 

 agriculture of China that ante-dates the buried epochs of the 

 Egyptian kings, and to-day flourishes, and feeds the swarming 

 millions of that empire, is based upon the principle that seeks 

 from the city restitution to the farm of what is taken from it 

 by the harvest. Great as is the benefit which agriculture al- 

 ready derives from the neighborhood of centres of industry 

 and commerce, it has hardly begun to use the resources which 

 abound in such localities and should be made available. In a 

 true economy, the city and the town should be regarded by the 

 farmer as a part of his farm-domain. They are so by the laws 

 of nature. They should be so in the practice of husbandry 

 and the regulations of their police. 



The problem of utilizing the sewage of cities, which is 

 so earnestly discussed abroad, has vital relations to the pro- 

 gress of civilized states. Throughthe sewers of cities drain- 

 ing into rivers and the ocean, the highest properties of 

 the soil are irrecoverably lost. The turbid currents of 

 Korth river, the Thames and the Seine, are richer than 

 Pactolus with its sands of gold. For that which is pol- 

 lution to their waters is the touch of magic to the fields 

 and the power of food for successive generations of men. 

 The value of this material as a fertilizer is obvious, but it has 

 been comparatively estimated and put beyond controversy by 

 the experiments of the Prussian government in reclaiming land 

 with the sewage of Dresden and Berlin. Land which Avithout 

 any applications yielded but three to one from the seed sown 

 and seven to one when treated with the ordinary resources of 

 the farm, yielded fourteen to one when fertilized from the 

 sewer. As a mere problem of pecuniary saving it is a mo- 

 mentous one. The fertiUzing portions of the sewage of the city 

 of New York are computed, on the lowest estimate, to be worth 

 seven million dollars jier annum. AV'e have authority for say- 

 ing that the wasted drainnge of the city of Boston is capable 

 of restoring annually to a high condition thirty thousand acres 

 of sterile land. The yearly waste of fertilizing elements in 



