Great Britain and Ireland are carefully computed at one hun- 

 dred and forty million dollars. There is no direction in -which 

 ingenuity has of late been oftener or more effectively exercised 

 in the industrial arts, than in contriving modes by which the 

 dross, the shavings, the chips, all the unassimilated residues 

 that remain after the completion of the main product, are 

 converted to some profitable use. But there is no problem to 

 which the ingenious mind could turn itself with greater ad- 

 vantage, than that of utilizing sewage. The invention of a 

 plan by which the slime and sediment of cities may be trans- 

 formed into corn and wheat for human sustenance, and the 

 vigor of the vegetating earth be perpetually renewed, gives 

 scope for one of the most beneficent systems of economy ever 

 devised. The revenues of a kingdom would be a cheap 

 equivalent for such a plan. The statesman seeking for his 

 country unfailing sources of prosperity, the sanitary physician 

 striving to convert the fountains of disease and pestilence into 

 fountains of life and strength, the farmer anxious to invigorate 

 his exhausted lands, the chemist eager to give new proofs of 

 the resources of his favorite science, the engineer who would 

 render a public service, can afford to give this subject his 

 deepest thought and care. 



Centres of mechanical and manufacturing industry, and 

 of the commerce based upon it, give to a system of agri- 

 culture its desired stability. There is little material out of 

 which to make exhausted fields and nomadic farmers in a 

 region that commands easy access to the market. Land there 

 is valuable, and yields a rent ; while the inducement of profit 

 is always operating to keep it in good condition. No amount 

 of native richness in the soil can make good the want of 

 markets. But neighboring markets can make a sterile soil 

 rich. Nothing will counteract the tendency of the American 

 farmer to wander away from home, but a home demand for his 

 product. This makes the fortunes of both the farmer and the 

 farm. See what a stimulus the manufactures of England have 

 been to her agriculture. Two centuries ago the highest aver- 



