THE 
AGRICULTURAL 
GAZETTE. 
809 
49—1846.] 
OYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF ENG- 
LAND.—TWO LECTURES will be delivered before the 
Members of the Society on the occasion of their December 
General Meeting, by Joun Ryan, M.D., LL.D., Professor of 
Chemistry to the Royal Polytechnic Institution of London, 
&c. &c. &c., in the great Theatre of that establishment, on the 
evenings of Wednesday the 9th, and Thursday the 10th of De- 
cember; to which Members of the Society will have the privi- 
lege of free admission, at the pri eti nstitution 
No. 5, Cavendish-square, on presenting Tickets, to be obtained 
by them of the Secretary, at the Society's House in Hanover- 
square, 
The object of these Lectures will be, to give a strictly Ele- 
mentary i the Sut which enter into the 
Composition of Plants and Soils, and to elucidate their various 
Chemical and Mechanical Properties by Experimental Ilus- 
trations. 
The Rooms of the Society in Hanover-square will be thrown 
Open, as usual, for the accommodation of Members, from 6 to 
10 o'clock on the evenings of Wednesday the 9th, Thursday the 
10th, and Friday the 11th of December. 
Meeting will be held on Saturday, the 12th of 
o’clock in the forenoon. z 
By order of the Council, 
AMES Hupson, Secretary. 
The Genera 
December, at 11 
London, Nov. 28, 1846. 
Che Agricultural ex agette. 
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1846. 
MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
al Society of England 
LOCAL SOCIETIES. 
Liandovery—Bath—Rugeley—Arran 
Dec 7—Ds 
i n- — Bakewell 
J-k— Newark I— Wootton Basset 
Market HIN—B. 
Yoxford— 
a 
inebory 
Our correspondent “ Y. Z.” has imposed upon 
us a task which we might fairly decline, on the 
ground that, though highly favourable to the appli- 
cation of the refuse of towns to the purposes of 
agriculture, and firmly convinced that the plan pro- 
posed by the METROPOLITAN SEWAGE Manure 
OMPANY js the only reasonable and practicable 
way of dealing with that refuse, we are by no means 
50 pledged to the details of any plan as to under- 
take its championship. But as we are anxious 
to promote a discussion of the merits of this mea- 
sure, we will, to the best of our ability, answer the 
objections of our correspondent. We do this in the 
hope that others who may take a more favourable 
view of the intended operations of the Metropoli- 
tan Sewage Manure Company than our correspond- 
ent “ Y. Z.” may be induced to favour us with their 
reasons for so doing. 
Our correspondent sets out with stating that our 
former remarks on this subject have raised in his 
mind an expectation that we are able to satisfy the 
public ‘respecting the extraordinary discrepancies 
which are to be found in the published evidence 
and in the proceedings of the Company.” We sub- 
mit that this expectation is in some degree unrea- 
sonable. Such discrepancies are inseparable from 
all evidence on all subjects, and especially on new 
ones. If our correspondent will point out any in- 
stance of a similar kind, in which similar discre- 
pancies have not shown themselves, if he will give us 
any example of a ‘blue book,’ or a trial, free from 
still wider divergence of opinion; then we will 
pledge ourselves to undertake the Herculean labour 
of reconciling the conflicting opinions and state- 
ments to be found in the evidence before the Health 
of Towns’ Commission, and the Select Committee 
of the House of Commons on Metropolitan Sewage 
Manure. The discrepancies in question could not 
have escaped the notice of the Select Committee 
itself, and yet their laborious and careful inquiry 
issued in a report highly favourable to the plan of 
the Company. That report itself must, therefore, 
stand in the stead of an answer from our own pen. 
We will not even undertake to defend Mr. Smrrn, 
of Deanston, from the attack of our correspondent. 
We think Mr. Surru somewhat sanguine in some 
of his expectations. We do not, for instance, be- 
lieve that the Sewage water can be supplied at 2d, 
per ton, even on the supposition that the quantity 
pumped out were increased tenfold. We doubt 
whether the water could be supplied, even without 
a profit, at less than 2d. per ton; and we look upon 
the penny which makes up the 3d. that Mr. MyLye 
proposes to charge, and on which he rests his cal- 
culations of gain, as the maximum of the Company’s 
profit. 
The abandonment of the reservoirs is an act 
which we are by no means disposed to defend, but 
we have no doubt that the Company were obliged 
to make this concession or lose their bill, as they 
were forced to abandon the very eligible plan of 
carrying their pipes through some of the broad 
streets and squares of the west end, where it was 
feared they would have occasioned inconvenience, 
in order to disarm the opposition of the inhabitants 
of Belgravia. This opposition on the part of men 
whose position in society would have led us to expect 
better things of them, has forced the Company to 
consent to lay their pipes in the bed of the river, 
subject to the consent of the Navigation Committee 
of the Corporation of London, which consent a 
prejudiee both narrow and discreditable has led 
them to refuse. Accordingly, as we find by the 
London papers, the Company is obliged to apply to 
Parliament to sanction a plan free from all con- 
ceivable objection, but secure, of course, of some in- 
terested and ignorant opposition, that ofa tunnelled 
sewer to intercept the waters of the principal sewers 
of Westminster, and conduct them, without the pos- 
sibility of injury or nuisance, to a station at Ham- 
mersmith. 
For abandoning the reservoirs and submitting 
to expensive and inconvenient modifications, there- 
fore, the Metropolitan Sewage Manure Company 
is not responsible. The entire blame must fall 
on the opposition which the Company has had to 
encounter. But the question arises, and with it we 
presume our correspondent wishes us to deal:—is 
the abandonment of the reservoirs fatal to the suc- 
cess of the Company's undertaking? We think not. 
We believe that every market gardener and every 
farmer will have a covered reservoir of his own, into 
which the Company will pour their supplies at such 
times as they are notlaying on water by the hose, 
or supplying the water-carts of those gardeners or 
farmers who have not provided themselves with 
reservoirs. We have lately conversed with a gen- 
tleman who has just returned from a long sojourn in 
Italy, and who informs us that in the neighbourhood 
of Lucea every farmer and gardener has his covered 
tank, into which he empties the contents of cesspools 
carted from the city. From this covered reservoir 
he supplies his garden or farm, applying the refuse 
by hand, a woman carrying it in a rude vessel on 
her back, and a man manuring the plants with a 
sort of ladle. Several of these receptacles are to 
be seen in every direction, and being covered they 
are not complained of as a nuisance, and we believe 
that similar covered reservoirs will be provided in 
the neighbourhood of London, that the sewer- 
water will be stored in them, and mixed with such 
other manure as the garden or farm may yield. The 
sewer-water will thus form what our cooks call 
stock, that is to say, a kind of mother-liquor for the 
formation of liquid manures, 
We believe that the Company will soon see 
covered reservoirs spring up on every side to re- 
ceive their sewer-water ; and we have no doubt that 
in this, as in other cases, many modes of application 
not yet thought of will come into play. But our 
correspondent seems to look upon the necessary 
preliminary to the application of liquid manure— 
thorough draining—as an insurmountable obstacle 
to the success of the Company’s operations ; and so 
it would be if the cost of drainage were what he 
sets down—namely 30/. per acre. This is pro- 
bably ten times the actual cost, which is generally 
estimated at 3/. or 4l. an acre. At this more moderate 
estimate we doubt not that draining will soon come 
into universal use, not as a preparation for the use 
of sewer-water, but as a reasonable proceeding per 
se, and a necessary preliminary to all good and 
profitable farming. As to the objection that the 
quantity of sewer-water which the Company pro- 
pose to apply is too large to be carried off by land 
however well drained, we must content ourselves by 
pointing to the case of the meadows near Mans- 
field, to which the maximum quantity (500 tons), is 
certainly applied throughout the year, in a state of 
dilution still greater than that of the sewer-water of 
London, and nevertheless with a success little short 
of that obtained with the “turtle soup of Edinburgh.” 
Another objection which our correspondent ad- 
vances is this: That when by the application of 
sewer-water the meadow lands shall have been made 
to feed a large number of cows, those cows will 
themselves yield the manure necessary to keep 
them in a state of fertility, and that consequently 
the pipes which the Company have laid down will be 
no longer required. The answer to this objection 
seems to us to be obvious. It will be to the interest of 
the farmer to purchase these pipes for the applica- 
tion of his own home-made liguid manare, and thus 
to replace the outlay of the company ; but in many, 
perhaps in most instances, he will still continue his 
use of sewer-water as the liquid with which to dilute 
the more concentrated drainage of the cow-house or 
stable. 
We have only space to notice one or two 
errors into which our correspondent has fallen 
relative to the value of the sewer-water. Professor 
MILLER, as he observes, estimates the value of the 
fertilising substances passing into the Thames from 
King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer at 23,3607. a-year, and 
he goes on to object that asMr.MyrNE only proposes 
to pump away little more than half the quantity to 
which this value is attached, he will confer upon 
the agriculturist a value of 13,626/., for which he 
expects at 3d. a ton 43,7507. ; so that the farmer 
would be paying for the sewer-water upwards of 
three times its value. We are surprised that our 
correspondent, with his evident intelligence and 
acuteness, should not have perceived the obvious 
fallacies involved in this objection. Professor 
Miiter’s estimate of upwards of 23,0007. is the sum 
which three leading constituents of the sewer-water 
—the ammonia,the potash,and the soluble phosphates 
—would fetch, if they were extracted and sold in a 
separate form to the farmer for manure, to which 
Dr. Mixxer adds a very moderate sum as the value 
of the matters held in suspension. The sum of 
23,0007. and upwards is therefore less than the value 
of the sewer-water of the King’s Scholars’ Pond 
Sewer if it were taken up by the farmer at the 
very mouth of the sewer. The 3d. per ton is the 
sum proposed to be charged by the Company for 
the sewer-water conveyed to the market garden or 
farmyard, and represents the intrinsic value of the 
liquid plus the cost of conveyance. There is the 
same sort of difference between Professor MILLERS 
estimated value of the sewer-water and its value to 
the consumer, as there is between the Is. or is. 6d. 
a load which the farmer pays in London for the 
best town manure, and the sum which he would be 
willing to give for it at his own door some five or 
six miles oif. 
The other error into which our correspondent 
has fallen, and which we are anxious to correct, is 
involved in his observations respecting the meadows 
near Edinburgh. It is quite true that the drainage 
of the town is originally of the con: 
“ turtle soup ;” but this matter, before it is allowed 
to flow on to the land, deposits its grosser parts in 
settling ponds, assumes very much the consistence, 
and has very nearly the chemical constitution, of the 
water of the King’s Scholars’ Pond sewer. Now, 
what happens with this liquid as it flows over the 
land? Why, it parts with a small fraction of the 
matters which it holds in solution, and ultimately 
reaches the sea still rich in the food of plants. 
But the land, besides taking to itself this small por- 
tion of the constituents of that part of the sewer 
water which is thus wasted, drinks up a large quan- 
tity, of which it appropriates a// the constituents. 
This, then, is our correspondent’s mistake. He alto- 
gether forgets this quantity taken up by the land, 
and assumes that the land only receives 1-9th of 
soluble constituents of the water which { 
the sea. If the sewer-water, instead of fl 
the land and running into the sea is supposed to be 
applied by watering-pot, or hose, or wate 
land absorbs and appropriates all its 
Ifthe land near Edinburgh merely ai 
part of the matters held in solution by 
water which flows over it, and by virtue of this frac- 
tion attained its extraordinary fertility, then would 
sewer-water be not merely of wonderful efficacy, 
but perfectly miraculous; and the arguments of 
* Y. Z." might be made of irresistible weight in 
support of the cause which he attacks. If one- 
ninth part can work such wonders, what must be the 
effect of nine-ninths! 
After having pointed out these very obvious mis- 
takes in the letter of our correspondent, he will 
forgive us if we do not encroach further on our 
space by notieing points of less importance. 
A few more words, however, in conclusion, on the 
vexata questio of solid versus liquid manure. We 
see by the London papers that the London Sewage 
Company is about to renew its application to Par- 
liament, from which it is clear that they are still 
labouring under the strange delusion that it is pos- 
sible to deal profitably with the solid deposits 
from the sewers. We believe that the pr ters of 
this scheme, like our correspondent, have over- 
looked some simple but conclusive considerations, 
and have fallen into a very transparent error. The 
contents of a cesspool comprise all the valuable 
refuse of a house in a half-solid, half-liquid, form, 
and are, as every one knows, a very valuable 
manure. The sewer-water is, so to speak, a solu- 
tion of all these matters with valuable addi- 
tions, in a weak brine (for each gallon of sewer- 
water contains about 13 grains of common salt). 
Now, this weak brine, of which we speak, dissolves 
out all the soluble matters from the solid substances 
conveyed into the sewers, the greater and more 
valuable part of which no process of precipitation 
can possibly separate afresh. So that the deposit 
from the sewer-water, especially after the addition 
of lime, is a comparatively valueless material, which 
would be dear at a tenth of the price which the 
London Sewage Company propose to charge. A 
large proportion of this deposit is, in fact, mere silt, 
a mixture of the debris of granite from the roads, 
and oxide of iron from the wheels of carriages. 
The more this subject of the application of the re- 
fuse of towns to agriculture is considered, the more 
certainly will the plan of distributing the entire 
refuse, dissolved or suspended in water, by means of 
engines and pipes, commend itself to the judgment 
