civ REPORT—1858. 
cations of his general rules of practice. Palzeontology kas brought to light 
unexpected sources of valuable manures, in phosphatic relics of ancient animal 
life, accumulated in astounding masses in certain localities of England, as, 
for instance, in the red-crag of Suffolk, and the greensands of Cambridge. 
But enormous quantities of azotic, ammoniacal, and phosphatic matters 
are still suffered to run to waste; and, as if to bring the wastefulness more 
home to conviction, these products, so valuable when rightly administered, 
become a source of annoyance, unremunerative outlay, and disease, when, as 
at present in most towns, imperfectly and irrationally disposed of. 
For the most part, thought is taken only how to get rid of these pro- 
ducts in the easiest and quickest way. The metropolitan authorities have 
hitherto carried the chain of reasoning no further. They have turned them . 
into the Thames, the receptacle nearest at hand; but in so doing have failed 
in their prime intention. The metropolis is not even rid of its excreta; but 
they have returned upon it and accumulated, with increased noxious and 
morbific power, on the strands of the valley that bisects it; appealing, as is 
notorious, summer after summer, to the very legislature itself, with uninter- 
mitting and importunate odours, compelling the attention of the possessors 
of lands and houses to this important subject. 
Now here I would beg leave to remark that, in the operations of Nature, 
there is generally a succession of processes coordinated for a given result : 
a peach is not directly developed as such from its elements ; the seed would, 
a priori, give no idea of the tree, nor the tree of the flower, nor the fertilized 
germ of that flower of the pulpy fruit in which the seed is buried. It is 
eminently characteristic of the Creative Wisdom, this far-seeing and prevision — 
of an ultimate result, through the successive operations of a coordinate series 
of seemingly very different conditions. 
The further a man discerns, in a series of conditions, their cordination to 
produce a given result, the nearer does his wisdom approach—though the 
distance be still immeasurable—to the Divine wisdom. 
One philanthropist builds a fever-hospital, another drains a town. One 
crime-preventer hangs the man, another trains the boy. One financier 
would raise money by augmenting a duty, or by a direct tax, and finds the re- 
venue not increased in the expected ratio. Another diminishes a tax, or abo- 
lishes a duty, and through foreseen consequences the revenue is improved. 
Quarantine exemplifies only the first step in the progress of thought, bearing 
on the prevention of a dreaded distemper. It is asystem which might keep 
out contraband goods or uncertified strangers, but it is powerless against 
the gaseous factors of plague, cholera, or yellow fever. No European 
country suffers more from such maladies “than Naples or Portugal, where 
quarantine regulations are most stringent. 
Agriculture, let me repeat, has made and is making great and encouraging 
progress. But much yet remains to be done. Were agriculture adequately 
advanced, the great problem of the London sewage would be speedily solved. . 
