July 1st, 1887.] 



SCIENTIFIC NE\VS. 



like, and restore nothing, we render the land ultimately 

 barren. Thousands of square miles of what were once 

 luxuriant arable soils have been brought into this condition, 

 and are now no longer worth cultivating. 



To prevent the land from falling into this state there are 

 only two methods. We must either import fertilizing 

 matter from abroad to make up the loss ; or we must 

 restore to the soil the liquid and solid materials indirectly 

 taken from it by all creatures which are being fed on the 

 produce of such soil. 



The former of these two methods sounds very plausible. 

 But we must remember that in no part of the world do the 

 elements of plant-food exist in unlimited quantities, and that 

 the demand for them is constantly extending. Countries 

 from which we used to import manures, such as bone ashes, 

 dried blood, etc., are now themselves importers and are 

 competing with us in the markets. 



But leaving this on one side it certainly does seem some- 

 what absurd to pay money to foreign countries for fertilizing 

 substances, and at the same time to be continually throwing 

 similar fertilizing matter into the sea ! 



It is self-evident that the sewage of London, if properly 

 applied to the land, would produce food enough to support 

 the population of London, conditions of climate and weather 

 being supposed fairly favourable. 



Now, all this will doubtless be proclaimed mere truism, 

 stale as the moral maxims in a copy-book. Granted ; we 

 have been uttering no sensational novelties, but old truths, 

 which, stale as they have become, are perseveiingly 

 ignored. 



We still hear proposals for doing almost anything with 

 sewage rather than applying it to the land. 



Most of us know that when cesspools were of necessity 

 abolished in our towns, and the system of water-carriage 

 introduced, each community poured the whole excrementi- 

 tious matters of its population, as well as all other waste 

 and polluted waters, domestic or industrial, into the nearest 

 river. This was marvellously cheap, but, unfortunately, at 

 the same time, supremely nasty. Not only was the entire 

 manurial value of the faecal matters wasted, but the river 

 was rendered offensive to the senses and dangerous to pub- 

 lic health. The water below the town became unfit for in- 

 dustrial purposes, deadly to fish, and hurtful, if not poisonous, 

 to cattle. The next town down stream, though perfectly 

 willing to contribute its quota to the pollution, conceived 

 itself entitled to receive the stream in a clear and wholesome 

 condition. Riparian proprietors complained that they were 

 deprived of rights which they had enjoyed of old, and filed 

 bills in Chancery to restrain the pollution. 



To what an extent the character of our rivers has been 

 altered by their conversion into common sewers may be 

 gathered from the fact that within the memory of man, 

 goodly salmon have been taken in the Clyde near the busiest 

 part of Glasgow. 



It must not be supposed that the claims of the riparian 

 owners were always urged in favour of the purity of rivers. 

 At a meeting for the discussion of this difficult question, we 

 heard an elderly calico-printer, one of the most eminent in 

 Britain, say, that when he began to experiment on the 

 purification of his waste waters, he met with a totally un- 

 expected rebuff. He received a letter from the solicitors to 

 the ground-landlord informing him that the right to pollute 

 the river was one of the easements of the estate, which might 

 be lost if not continually exercised. By purifying his waste 

 waters he was, therefore, it appears, breaking one of the 

 conditions of his lease. 



But where the pollution of a river was not a right estab- 

 lished by old prescription it was frequently restrained by 

 an injunction. And offending towns were in danger of 



having their sewer-mouths blocked up, and the sewage 

 forced back upon them unless they took measures for its 

 purification. 



However, alike the Court of Chancer}' and the special Acts 

 since past allowed the pollution of the Thames to continue, 

 on the good old principle that on the large scale wrong 

 becomes right. 



{To be continued.) 



BASIC CINDER AS MANURE. 



TN the Chemical Section of the Manchester Exhibition 

 -1- Professors Wrightson and Munro, of the College of 

 Agriculture, Downton, near Salisbury, exhibit a chart 

 showing the manurial value of Basic Cinder, and on a table 

 are displayed sainples of the cinder, ground and unground, 

 precipitated phosphate of lime, and superphosphate of lime, 

 both made from basic cinder, etc. The points of special 

 interest with regard to basic cinder are (i) its manurial 

 value owing to its highly phosphatic composition ; (2) the 

 extreme simplicity of its application as a fertiliser, all that 

 is required being a disintegrator to reduce it to an impalp- 

 able powder similar to coprolite flour; (3) its abundance, 

 one large steel factory (the North-Eastern Steel Company at 

 Middlesborough) turning out 1,200 tons a week, or 62,400 

 tons per annum. This enormous quantity is all available 

 for agricultural purposes, and may be regarded as a most 

 timely assistance to agriculturists. Basic cinder should be 

 applied freely, and at the rate of from half to one ton per 

 acre. 



The cost is at present too high, but doubtless this will 

 adjust itself shortly to its true standard of value. The 

 North-Eastern Steel Company are now erecting a powerful 

 series of progressive disintegrators, and these will be in work 

 during the present summer. The composition of basic 

 cinder, analysed by Dr. Munro at Downton, is : 



9993 



In more recent makes the percentage of phosphoric acid 

 has been three to four per cent, higher. Experiments made 

 at Downton and at Ferryhill have demonstrated that the 

 large amount of protoxide of iron, much of which is in 

 combination with sulphur, has not acted injuriously on 

 vegetation, and there appears to be no drawback whatever 

 to the employment of very heavy dressings. Dr. Munro, in 

 fact, submitted seeds to the most absolute test by actually 

 germinating them in a soil composed of pure basic cinder. 



Bodies Two Thousand Years Old. — The Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion has received from Col. J. H. Wood, of St. Paul, the bodies of 

 five persons — a man, woman, and three children — taken from a 

 cave in the Bad Lands of Dakota by a miner. The bodies are 

 simply dried up, and are not petrified, but are in a remarkable 

 state of preservation. Scientific men who have seen them say they 

 belong to a race which probably existed two thousand years 

 ago. 



