428 
Half-a-dozen English Sewage Farms. 
become lighter and more friable, more easily cultivated, and 
more capable both of defapcating the sewage as it passes over 
it, through it, and amongst it, and, at the same time more 
capable of doing justice to its fertilising powers. The kind of 
rotation adopted by Mr. Fairbairn may be gathered from the 
cropping of one of the fields, which in 1872 and 1873 was in 
Italian I'ye-grass. Ploughed up in the autumn of 1873, it was 
sown partly with oats and partly with barley in 1874, and after 
being fallowed in the autumn of that year, it was sown with 
beans in the spring of 1875, and, after due cultivation, with 
Italian rye-grass again last autumn, yielding a magnificent first- 
crop this spring. A good deal of the second year's Italian rye- 
grass upon the farm this year is in anything but a satisfactory 
condition ; and it seemed a pity that such immense stores of 
fertilising matter should be poured over land which is in 
this case covered with plants so little able to make good 
use of it. The sewaging for all grain-crops is confined to a 
winter irrigation of the land intended for spring-sown crops, 
and a watering in early autumn, if the weather permits, of the 
land that is to receive a wheat-sowing. The northern farm is 
well provided with buildings and roads ; it is managed by 
a staff of 8 men and 4 horses, in addition to occasional hired 
labour as it is required at special times ; and it has hitherto 
shown a considerable balance of receipts over expenditure other 
than rent — in fact, more than a fair agricultural rent of the 
land. 
The southern farm, under Mr. Southon's management, includes 
160 acres of exceedingly various soil. It lies for the most part 
in two valleys uniting above Groombridge Place Mill, whose mill- 
wheel limits the level of the final outfall. The lower fields of the 
main valley are in fair permanent pasture ; the corresponding level 
of the lateral valley is little but bog-land ; and with the imperfect 
drainage which alone is possible here, it might have been better 
planted with osiers ; but this, too, is being brought under sewage 
irrigation, and has been roughly levelled and sown with Italian 
rye-grass for the purpose. The sides of the main valley an^ 
covered with a fair, and in places very fertile, loam ; those of the 
lateral valley are for the most part a poor sand, which "has been 
till lately a mere heath-clad surface. At the foot of the farm 
beyond this lateral valley there is a considerable area of fair 
agricultural land. The slopes are everywhere convenient for 
the purpose of a sewage farm, and the soil is much better suited 
for that purpose than that of the sewage farm in the northern 
valley. The sewage, about 300,000 to 400,000 gallons daily of 
dry weather flow, is brought 3 miles in a conduit to the upper end 
of the principal valley, where subsidence-tanks are provided for 
