4G8 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



but if, instead of carrying on their business in places selected for other 

 reasons, the owners of glasshouses were to settle near sewage outfalls, 

 where such effluents were available, they would get their fertilization for 

 nothing, presuming that the communities producing the sewage regarded 

 it as of as little value as they do at present. 



Coming to the practice of nitrification on a small scale, sufficient 

 for the production of about 150 gallons of highly fertilizing effluent each 

 twenty-four hours, the surface area of the filtering trays would require 

 to be six square feet. It will be noticed that they are shown 3 feet in 

 length, in which case the width would be 2 feet. Any hard material, 

 graded properly, serves as a filtering medium ; but, seeing that the 

 Ashtead results were obtained from hard coke from the gasworks graded 

 to particles of 1 inch to ^ inch — and this is generally available — it would 

 be as well to use it in preference to anything else. 



The filtering boxes or trays are supported upon an upright frame- 

 work, which must be strengthened by struts or stays unless the posts 

 can be fixed above to the ceiling or rafters of a shed. It will be noticed 

 that provision is made for sliding them out and in like drawers. When 

 once the distributing apparatus is started it works continuously night and 

 day with practically no attention, and the only requisite is a little patience 

 to allow of the filter's " maturing " or becoming ripe, which they begin to 

 do very rapidly, so that a high nitrification should begin to be obtainable 

 in about three weeks from the date of starting. When once established, 

 the nitrification goes on automatically and without cessation. 



Before concluding, it may be well to anticipate any criticism based upon 

 the value of the nitrogen obtained, say in 24 hours from the apparatus, 

 in terms of the market price of nitrates, and to point out that the effluents 

 spoken of are very different from the same quantity of water containing 

 one or two pennyworths of nitrate of soda. The estimate of value must 

 be taken from the manurial qualities of the natural plant-food as a whole. 

 At Caterham, upon a hungry chalk soil, the growth of dahlias was 

 phenomenal after watering with the effluent from the barrack sewage. 

 The plants were about six feet in height, sixteen feet in circumference, 

 and covered with blooms. I do not know of any other manure that would 

 have given similar results. 



When Warrington in 1850 read his paper before the Chemical Society 

 on " The Adjustment of the Relations between the Animal and Vegetable 

 Kingdoms, by which the vital functions of both are permanently main- 

 tained," he struck the highest note possible in connection with the 

 final solution of the sewage problem ; and it is because this very simple 

 apparatus does to a great extent realize this conception in practice at 

 very small cost that I have ventured to bring it before the notice of this 

 Society. 



