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“THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1869. 
TOWN SEWAGE 
NE of the most imperative requirements of social 
life is some means of dealing with those waste 
products of the human mechanism which are dirt only 
while they remain out of their proper place, but are 
capable of becoming a source of serious inconvenience 
and injury whenever they are allowed to accumulate in 
the neighbourhood of dwellings, especially in denscly 
populated places. In the case of isolated dwellings, and 
where the population is scattered, no great difficulty would 
be experienced in devising simple measures for disposing of 
this refuse so as to meet all requirements. But wherever 
the population is concentrated, the difficulty of dealing 
with house refuse, so as to prevent its becoming a 
nuisance, and, at the same time, to make it useful, is 
greatly increased. Partly on this account, and partly 
because neglected accumulations of house refuse are 
in the highest degree cetrimental to health, the 
measures adopted in towns for dealing with house refuse 
have been subjected to the control of the municipal 
authorities, instead of being left to the option of the 
individual occupiers of houses; and in modern times 
it has come to be regarded as one of the first duties of 
such bodies to provide for the disposal of house refuse 
so as to preserve the health and life of the populations 
under their care. This sanitary axiom has indeed been 
forced into recognition by the ravages of epidemic 
disease, such as plague, fever, or cholera, and it may 
now be deemed unquestionable, except where ignorance 
overcomes intelligence, or where mistaken notions of 
economy prevail. 
On sanitary grounds it has been decided, or, to say the 
least, very generally admitted, that the most efficient mode 
of dealing with house refuse is to remove it at once from 
dwellings, and by means of a copious use of water to 
sweep it away through underground channels outside of 
towns. In this way the domestic nuisances that were 
familiar during the early part of this century have been 
done away with, the town nuisance that arose from the use 
of cesspools has been suppressed, and the sanitary state of 
towns has generally been improved. But the removal of 
those nuisances has given rise to another one, affecting 
not only individual dwellings and towns, but the whole 
country. The continuous discharge of vast quantities of 
house refuse, distributed through great volumes of water 
into rivers and streams that are often sources of water- 
supply for domestic use, has rendered them so foul that 
this result of sanitary improvements is acknowledged to 
be a national nuisance, and one of the very highest im- 
portance in regard to public health. 
Hence has arisen the question, What is to be done with 
town drainage? And this question still perplexes the 
Government, municipal authorities, river conservancies, 
and legal tribunals. In many instances the sanitary works 
carried out in towns at vast expense have given rise to 
serious nuisances at places lower down the streams into 
which the sewage is discharged ; in other cases the execu- 
tion of such works is prevented by prohibition against 
the discharge of sewage, and in some cases practices in 
direct opposition to legal enactment are tolerated because 
no remedy seems applicable, 
NATUR 
So much for the difficulties attending the municipal 
object for getting rid of house refuse. It is now necessary 
to consider the subject in another light, and inquire what 
is the “right place” where house refuse is no longer to 
be regarded as dirt, but as material of value? How is 
it not only to be got rid of, but also turned to account and 
made useful? For this purpose it must be remembered 
that this waste material consists of the portions of our 
food which have done their work in the process of nutri- 
tion, and those portions of it which were not required in 
that process. In both cases plants are the source from 
which the constitutent parts of this material have been 
derived. Those plants again have abstracted them from 
the land on which they grew, not accidentally, but as an 
essential condition of their growth. Here, then, in this 
fact that the constituents of house refuse are essential for 
the growth of plants, lies the key to the sewage problem, 
a possibility for the utilisation of town sewage. Thousands 
of tons of the same substances that are constituents of 
house refuse are annually imported into this country for 
use as manure in agriculture—ammonia in the guano from 
Peru; phosphates, or bones and phosphatic minerals, from 
all parts of the world; potash from South America and 
Germany. Thousands of acres of land lie unproductive 
from want of these substances, and some of their most 
important sources are only of limited duration. Mean- 
while the aggregate intrinsic value of those constituents 
in the house refuse of this country amounts to several 
millions annually. 
There are, however, serious difficulties to be overcome 
before the economic object of utilising town sewage as 
manure in agriculture can be realised so as to fulfil all 
requirements involved in the municipal object of getting 
rid of it, and in the still more important sanitary object of 
preventing it from becoming a source of injury to the 
public health. These difficulties arise chiefly from the 
enormous dilution of the sewage, partly by the use of water 
for removing house refuse, and partly by the admixture of 
surface water and subsoil drainage. Generally speaking, 
the constituents of town sewage which have an intrinsic 
value as manure are so much diluted that a quantity of 
them which would be worth one shilling in the state of a 
dry solid like guano or bones, containing only a small pro- 
portion of less valuable admixture, is in sewage mixed with 
from six to ten tons weight of water. Therefore, in order to 
give land an ordinary dressing of manure in the form of 
town sewage, it is necessary to apply a very large bulk of 
that liquid. This can very often be done without any great 
trouble, especially when the town from which the sewage 
is discharged lies high, and is surrounded by cultivated 
land at a lower level ; and even when this is not the case, 
the cost of pumping the sewage to a sufficient height, and 
the outlay for pumping works, would not generally be a 
serious obstacle to the application of town sewage as 
manure. However, the getting rid of sewage involves its 
continuous daily application to land ; and here the muni- 
cipal object is at variance with the agricultural object, of 
using the sewage only when it is wanted. Consequently, 
it would be necessary, in organising a general system of 
sewage utilisation, to establish a new system of farming ; 
to grow crops specially suited for the frequent application 
of very dilute liquid manure, and to have the land laid out 
for cropping in such a manner that there may always be a 
