364 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



tliis subject entitled, " Health and Wealth instead of Disease, Nuisance, 

 and Expense, caused by C^ss-Pools, &c." 



The following extract from Mr. Moule's work explains his meaning, and 

 the mode in which he puts his theory into practice : 



" The power and efficacy of this agent will, however, be best understood 

 and believed, if I give a simple narrative of what, during the last six mouths, 

 it has done for my own family, averaging during that period fifteen persons 

 daily. Eight months previous to this period, under a strong impression of 

 the evils either occasioned, or likely to be occasioned, by the vault or cess- 

 pool on my premises, and feeling it to be a nuisance to my next neighbor 

 as well as to myself, I filled it up with earth, and. ever since I have had 

 everything that otherwise would have gone into it received and removed in 

 buckets. And even this mode of removal, though offensive in idea, has 

 proved far less so in reality, than even a very small portion of the evils it 

 is intended to remedy. At first, the contents of these buckets were buried 

 in trenches about a foot deep in my garden ; but on the accidental discovery 

 that in three or four weeks after being thus deposited, not a trace of this 

 matter could be discovered, I had a shed erected, the earth beneath it sifted, 

 and with a portion of this the contents of the buckets every morning 

 mixed, as a man would roughly mix mortar. The whole operation of re- 

 moving and mixing does net occupy a boy more than a quarter of an hour. 

 And within ten minutes after its completion, neither the eye nor nose can 

 perceive anything offensive. This was the first observation I made. The 

 next was this, that when all the earth, which did not exceed three cart-loads, 

 had been thus employed, that which had been first used was sufficiently dried 

 to be used for the same purpose again ; and it absorbed and deodorized the 

 offensive matter as readily as at the first time. And so singularly does this 

 capability continue, that a portion of it is now being used for the fifth time 

 •for the same purpose; and thus all that offensive matter, which otherwise 

 would have been wasted in the vault, a nuisance to my house and the neigh- 

 borhood, and a source, it may be, of sickness and disease, is now a mass of 

 valuable manure, perfectly inoffensive both to the eye and nose. I have 

 taken fifty or sixty persons to see it without previously acquainting them 

 with its nature, and not one has guessed it. All have declared it to be 

 wholly without offence. Two have handled and smelt that, in the after- 

 noon, which had been mixed in the morning, without being able to discover 

 its nature. And more than this, I have the same day submitted some to 

 strong fire heat ; and that which, unmixed with earth, would under such 

 heat have been intolerable, in this mixed state, emitted no offensive smell 

 whatever. 



" The writer of this happens to know the locality of Mr. Moule's experi- 

 ments, and is of opinion that the chalky stratum of that part of Dorset- 

 shire eminently fits it for a favorable issue to such investigations as Mr. 

 Moule has been making ; but he is, nevertheless, fully of opinion — in fact 

 be knows it from personal observation — that earth of all kinds speedily 

 absorbs and deodorizes night soil when mixed therewith ; and that, in a 



