72 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 



nature of the soil, by adding those ingredients which are wanting in 

 sewage, and which the plants to be grown require in the largest pro- 

 portion." 



We are not at all likely to see the time even in our little country, 

 where agriculture is progressing from year to year, when crops shall 

 be cultivated with success by the aid of scientific recipes. Whether 

 sewage be a lop-sided manure or not — and we suppose it is incomplete, 

 to the extent, at any rate, of a definite quantity of bones, it is certain 

 that its weakest side possesses, in the quantity which should be applied 

 to land, superabundant strength. 



The Craigentinny meadows, below Edinburgh, which have been 

 irrigated with sewage water for a century or more, have continued to 

 yield 30 to 40 tons per acre, a produce for which Edinburgh cow- 

 keepers are content to pay 201. to 301. per annum. And on the lower 

 part of them, more recently reclaimed from the sea-shore, where the 

 original fertility of the land was absolutely nothing, the produce of 

 grass is as abundant as anywhere else. It is plain that Liebig's letter 

 has been written in the interests of that particular scheme for using 

 London sewage, which proposes to take it over many hundred 

 thousand acres, and distribute it at the rate of 2d. per ton, or there- 

 abouts, to the farmers, who will, no doubt, want something, whether 

 compounded by the chemist or not, to supplement the two or three 

 hundred tons per acre, with which it is believed the land will thus be 

 fertilized. The other scheme, which proposes to irrigate a comparatively 

 small area, has all the agricultural analogies in its favour. Craigen- 

 tinny, Croydon, Rugby, and Carlisle can all be quoted in its favour. 

 Meanwhile, there are 100,000,000 tons per annum now running out 

 to sea at Barking, and it is a shame to the agriculturists and com- 

 mercial men of England that such a mass of fertilizing matter should 

 thus run to waste. 



The proposal for turning it to use, which the Metropolitan Board 

 of Works has sanctioned, and which will come before Parliament 

 this spring, includes the lifting of the whole some 40 or 50 feet by 

 pump, and thereafter letting it flow along a channel down to the 

 south-eastern shore of Essex, where there is a great tract of foreshore 

 left dry at low water, ready to be embanked, and fertilized. The 

 Oxford Journal thus describes the plan : — 



" There are several special advantages connected with this scheme for 

 the utilization of London sewage which must not be forgotten. The dis- 

 trict where it would thus come into use is not a residential district. The 

 country which would thus be fertilized is very thinly pojDulated. And 

 any nuisance which might be created would thus affect' but very few. 

 Again, at the end of the forty miles of line, there is a tract of foreshore — 

 the Maplin Sands and the Dengie Flats — where 20,000 acres or more 

 might easily be embanked from the sea. So that here we have at once an 

 estate to be fertilized, where every 10,000 tons of sewage may be con- 

 verted into 30 or 40 tons of grass, and this into about 5 or 6 cwt. of 

 meat, or a corresponding value of milk, which will be sufficiently profitable 

 both to tempt and pay expenditure. There would thus be an outlet at 

 once for this 100,000,000 tons of sewage ; and this poor land, which would 

 need at first enormous supplies of fertilizing matter, might thus for a 



