430 Transactioxs os the American Institute. 



portable manure said to equal guauo. Bnrnt clay has been used as 

 an absorbent, and other expedients have been resorted to, but as yet 

 little has been accomplished, owing to the weak way in which the 

 work has been undertaken. However, the problem must be solved. 

 When it is solved, says our authority, and town waste is applied to 

 the plain, the products of the earth will be increased ten-fold, and 

 the sum of misery will be greatly diminished. 



Science has decided that the most important part of sewage is 

 human excrement. The Chinese knew its value centuries ago. It is 

 quite impossible, says Liebig, to form an adequate conception of the 

 care bestowed in that country on the collection of this true sustenance 

 of the soil. JSTo Chinese peasant, Eckeberg tells us, goes to the city 

 without carrying back at the two ends of his bamboo two buckets full 

 of what w^e call filth. Thanks to this practice, the land in China is 

 as fertile as in the days of Abraham. Chinese wheat yields a hundred 

 and twenty fold, and well fed are the 412,000,000 people of which 

 that great nation is composed. 



Wasted excrement, says Liebig, hastened the decay of Roman 

 ao-riculture, and there ensued a condition the most calamitous and 

 frightful. When the Cloacoe of the seven-hilled city had absorbed the 

 well-being of the Roman peasant, Italy was put in, and then Sicily, 

 and Sardinia, and Africa. 



Statistics inform us that in 1855-6 nearly ten million hundred 

 weight of guano was imported into England, and that in the course 

 of fifty years, sixty million hundred weight of crushed bone has also 

 been used in that country. Yet all this mass of manure, says Liebig, 

 is not worth mentioning when considered in relation to the arable 

 surface of Great Britain ; and it is but a drop when compared to the 

 flood of excrement carried by rivers to the ocean. 



This subject, the utilizing of the ejecta of the population, is receiving 

 increased attention in Europe. Mr. Alderman Mechi, of Tiptree farm, 

 a true refonner and enthusiast, has never ceased by tongue and pen 

 to urge its importance, and it has long been a prominent topic before 

 the Ro^'al Agricultural Society. A few years ago the Rev. Henry 

 Moule, Vicar of Fordington, Dorset, made an advance movement, 

 which, if followed, promises to result in immense benefit, and to come 

 nearer than any previous attempt to the solution of the problem. 



The chief principle, or first fact, upon which Mr. Moule's system is 

 based, is the power of dry pulverized earth, especially clay, to absorb 

 and retain ammonia and other fertilizers without arresting their 



