VALUE OF HUMAN EXCKEMENTS. 259 



other fluid contents to leak away, thus causing the loss 

 of a good deal of the most valuable matter, such as the 

 potash salts, and the soluble phosphates. The follow- 

 ing statement will show the great value of the excre- 

 ment of man. In the fortress of Rastadt and in the 

 soldiers' barracks in Baden generally, the privies are so 

 constructed that the seats open, through wide funnels, 

 into casks fixed upon carts. By this means the whole 

 of the excrements, both fluid and solid, are collected 

 without the least loss. When the casks are full, they 

 are replaced by empty ones.* 



The food of the soldier, in Baden, consists chiefly of 

 bread, but also of certain daily rations of meat and 

 vegetables. As the body of an adult does not increase 

 in weight, it needs no particular calculation to make 

 out that the collected excrements must contain the ash- 

 constituents of the bread, meat, and vegetables, and 

 also the whole of the nitrogen of the food. 



To produce a pound of corn, the soil has to furnish 

 the ash-constituents of that pound of corn ; if we sup- 

 ply these ash-constituents to a suitable field, the latter 

 will thereby be enabled to produce, in a number of 

 years, one pound of corn more than it would have done 

 without this additional supply of ash-constituents. The 

 daily ration of a soldier, in Baden, is 2 Ibs. of bread; 

 the excrements of the 8000 men of the different garri- 

 sons contain accordingly, per day, the ash-constituents 

 and the nitrogen of 16,000 Ibs. of bread, which returned 

 to the soil will fully suffice to reproduce the same quan- 

 tity of corn as had been used, in form of flour, to bake 



* The price of a cart is from 100 to 125 florins = 8 6s. Sd. to 10 8s. 

 4d. It will last about five years. The original outlay incurred by the 

 Army administration in Baden, in 1856 and 1857-, for the carts and casks 

 amounting to about 370, was speedily repaid out of the proceeds of the 

 manure. 



The collective number of the garrisons of Constance, Freiburg, Rastadt, 

 Carlsruhe, Bruchsal, and Mannheim, averages about 8000 men. The 

 receipts for manure sold were in 1852, 285; in 1853, 315; in 1854, 

 443 ; 1855, 400 ; 1856, 668 ; 185Y, 668 ; 1858, 680 ; 50 or 60 

 are to be deducted from these receipts annually for cost of maintenance, 

 repair, &c., of the carts, &c. (' Journ. of the Agrie. Soc. of Bavaria,' April 

 1860. Page 180.) 



