212 Chronicles of Science. [April, 



of only occasional and doubtful fitness, sewage, like other manures, 

 will produce only occasional or doubtful results. The life and 

 character of a plant are. in fact, an unalterable " quantity " in all 

 agricultural calculations. They may be improvable within very 

 narrow limits ; but no enthusiastic belief in the power of any new 

 agency in agriculture should blind us to the fact that, however 

 animals and, a fortiori, men, who are capable of influence by many 

 other motives besides the merely material ones, may improve under 

 education, plants have very limited capacities indeed. We may 

 educate our animals to some extent to bear with and perhaps to 

 profit by an unaccustomed set of circumstances, but plants must 

 be simply selected for their ascertained natural aptitudes. Happily 

 there are plants enough for which our climate is well adapted by 

 which we can most perfectly utilize the agency of sewage. Italian 

 ryegrass, mangold wurzel, cabbages, celery, asparagus, and straw- 

 berries all prosper wonderfully under its influence ; and even grain 

 crops, judiciously treated, will answer satisfactorily to the sewage 

 whip. We may hope, therefore, soon to see a profitable and whole- 

 some conversion of town drainage, now so great a plague, into useful 

 agricultural produce — good milk and vegetables, or even straw- 

 berries and cream ! 



The question of manure adulteration has occupied the attention 

 of the Koyal Agricultural Society of England, whose chemist, Dr. 

 Toelcker, is now authorized to publish every month all analyses of 

 adulterated foods and manures which pass through his hands : and 

 accordingly several very glaring instances have been gibbeted in 

 this way of worthless guanoes and superphosphates, in which 

 gypsum, earth, chalk, and sand figure in place of the genuine 

 ingredients of imported guano and bone-ash. This exposure of the 

 risks which the farmer incurs by incaution in the manure market 

 is the more necessary, when his success now more than ever seems 

 to depend on brains and bones — his own brains, as the ' Agricultural 

 Gazette : says, and somebody else's bones ! 



The current number of the ; English Agricultural Society's 

 Journal' contains an interesting report of Belgian agriculture, from 

 which, however, we do not gather any justification of the opinion 

 which has hitherto been prevalent, that the small farm in g of that 

 country is the best agriculture in the world. Of other communica- 

 tions which the Journal lays before its readers, we may name Dr. 

 Yoelcker's elaborate investigation into the value of beet pulp, the 

 refuse of the beet-sugar manufacture, and his report of experiments 

 which appear to indicate the usefulness of potash salts in manure 

 for mangold wurzel. There are also reports on the cheese farms 

 of Cheshire and on the American cheese factory system. Mr. 

 Bailey Denton also calls attention in its pages to the possibilities 

 of village sanitary economy in respect of water supply, cottage 



