260 POUDKETTE HUMAN EXCKEMENTS. 



the 16,000 Ibs. of bread. Beckoning 1 Ib. of corn to 

 2 Ibs. of bread, the excrements of the soldiers in the 

 Grand Duchy of Baden give, therefore, annually, the 

 ash-constituents required for the production of 43,760 

 cwts. of corn. 



The peasants about Rastadt and the other garrison 

 towns, having found out at last by experience the pow- 

 erful fertilising effect of these excrements upon their 

 fields, now pay for every full cask a certain sum (still 

 rising in price every year), which not only has long 

 since repaid the original outlay, besides covering the 

 annual cost of maintenance, repairs, &c., but actually 

 leaves a handsome profit to the department. 



The results brought about in these districts are 

 highly interesting. Sandy wastes, more particularly in 

 the vicinity of Rastadt and Carlsruhe, have been turned 

 into smiling corn-fields of great fertility. Assuming, 

 for the sake of illustration, that the peasants had to fur- 

 nish the whole corn produced by means of this manure, 

 to the military administrations of the several garrison 

 towns, there would thus be established a perfect circu- 

 lation of these conditions of life, which would provide 

 8000 men with bread, year after year, without in the 

 least reducing the productiveness of the fields on which 

 the corn is grown, because the conditions required for 

 the production of corn being thus always returned to 

 the soil, would continue to circulate and yet always re- 

 main the same.* 



What is said here about the corn-constituents ap- 

 plies, of course, equally to the constituents of meat and 

 vegetables, which, returned to the field, will reproduce 

 as much meat and vegetable matter as has been con- 

 sumed. The same relation that exists between the in- 



* When, some years ago, an order was suddenly issued by the authori- 

 ties of the city of Carlsruhe, to deodorise and disinfect the pits and cess- 

 pools with sulphate of iron, before being emptied, the farmers refused at 

 first to pay any longer for the contents, which they argued were by this 

 treatment deprived of their fertilising virtue. Experience has shown that 

 this is not the case, and the disinfected dung commands as high a price 

 now as the article in its pure state did formerly. The dung in the privy 

 carts requires no disinfecting. 



