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is because it contains all the ingredients that a plant can require, 

 because its action is certain, because it gives up these ingredients in a 

 proper state, in a readily assimilable form ; and the more closely any 

 artificial product approaches it, the more valuable is the action of such 

 a manure upon the land. 



But farmyard manure has one great drawback : it contains an 

 enormous amount of water — 60 to 80 per cent, of its weight ; hence it 

 can only be used on the spot where it is produced ; carriage to any 

 distance is out of the question. Within the last few years, however, a 

 product has been obtained from night-soil, and urine, at Bloxwith, in 

 Staffordshire, which may be well compared by its composition and emi- 

 nent fertilising qualities to concentrated farmyard manure. It is got 

 by evaporating the excreta of large towns as nearly as possible to the 

 dry state, and forms, I believe, the most perfect manure actually known 

 — that, indeed, which Nature evidently intended for our use. Instead 

 of containing 60 to 80 per cent, of water, it contains only 12 to 16 per 

 cent. ; therefore its transportation to considerable distances can be 

 effected as with guano. Upon analysis it is shown to contain all the in- 

 gredients of rich farmyard manure in a concentrated state, and in the 

 same assimilable form. 



Various kinds of costly apparatus have been erected at Bloxwitch and 

 Churchbridge by the Urban Manure Company in order to get this 

 valuable product, and specimens of it have been submitted to the Royal 

 Horticultural Society in London — the superintendents of whose gar- 

 dens experimented with it as early as 1868 or 1869 — and to myself. 

 The former have drawn up an official report, sanctioned by the Council 

 of the Society, upon its effects. This report coincides completely with 

 the results of my own experience on a smaller scale, and both confirm 

 once more the older experiments of Professor Polstorff, made in 1847, 

 alluded to above. 



Since then, being anxious to learn the effects of this new product 

 upon the cane soils of our West Indian Colonies, with whose composi- 

 tion I was acquainted, I applied to my talented friend, Mr. W. 

 Bancroft Espeut (who informed me that he had used it in Jamaica), and 

 he replied that he had obtained most excellent results. 



The able manager of the works above mentioned, Captain Hall, to 

 whose skill and perseverance agriculture is mainly indebted for the 

 possibility of obtaining so valuable a product, has also forwarded to me 

 several letters from the cane-growers of Barbadoes, Demerara, and 

 Mauritius, showing clearly that the urban manure is giving ample 

 satisfaction, and is now very largely used. But for some time previously 

 I had never hesitated to recommend it as the best manure for the long- 

 worked Demerara soils. 



In 1871 some hundreds of tons were experimentally mixed with bone 

 meal and precipitated phosphate for the soils in British Guiana > which 

 had been found wanting in lime and somewhat deficient in phosphoric 

 acid, and have produced the most satisfactory results. I will give here 

 three analyses of some large bulks of this kind that have been shipped, 

 1 to Demerara, 2 and 3 to different estates in the islands, and by the 



