Half-a-dozen English Sewage Farms. 
413 
the town surveyor, whose purpose would naturally be rather to 
<lraw as little as possible on the rates than to acquire a name for 
ambitious or heroic work ; the farm was taken as it lay, without 
attempt at artificial levelling, and the work of irrigation was 
done, and still, indeed, remains, as an ordinary farmer would do 
it; its drainage was completed, and its lands and slopes were 
used, as any ordinary tenant, without capital to waste, would use 
them. The water, delivered at the highest point, is taken from 
one field to another in succession at a minimum of cost with a 
minimum of labour — a couple of men sufficing to shift and regu- 
late the stream, to keep the carriers and surface-conduits good, 
and to see that every part of the stream is distributed over a suf- 
ficient area before it leaves the farm. The inhabitants of the farm 
locality were provided, before they demanded it, with a supply 
of pure water from a neighbouring spring, although their stream, 
always too foul for domestic use, had been improved, not injured, 
by the proceedings of the Corporation. In this and other ways 
Cheltenham has been always prompt in providing a remedy, 
never waiting for costly coercion by the law. On a stiff clay- 
farm it is not likely that irrigation can be so perfectly successful 
as it will be where soil and subsoil are more pervious and absor- 
bent ; and already preparations are being made for the acquisition 
of more land, as other sewage-districts pour out their filthy 
drainage at the Cheltenham outfall. But, at all events, the Chelt 
has been in the mean time cleansed ; the riparian proprietors 
below are satisfied ; and Mr. Humphris, the town surveyor, 
and Mr. Brydges, the town clerk, and all whose guidance and 
advice contributed to this satisfactory result, may be heartily 
congratulated. 
Those, however, who are interested in the agricultural utili- 
sation of the immense quantity of fertilising matter which every 
town dismisses in its sewage, will not so readily welcome the 
Cheltenham results. The extra produce of the land derived from 
the application of the enormous quantity of manure which reaches 
the Cheltenham irrigation-farm through the sewer, is miserably 
unsatisfactory. The sewage is let run for a day at a time on one 
portion of a field after another ; the town (as landlord) retaining 
its right to distribute the water as the irrigator on the spot thinks 
right in order to its proper defeecation ; and only one mowing of 
the grass is permitted in the season, in order to retain this power 
of irrigation unlimited. Submitting to these conditions, the land 
is annually tendered for by three or four cowkeepers in the neigh- 
bourhood, at prices varying from 6^. to 9Z. per acre (for the 
next three years it has now been let for the sum of 800/. per 
annum); and, including the receipts for sewage applied to 
neighbouring land, which, however, are annually increasing, the 
iH 
