286 French Experimental Farm at Vaiijours. 
tural chemists who possess the somewhat rare gift of uniting 
sound scientific knowledge with good sense and acquaintance 
with practical matters, assuredly are, or ought to be, in the very 
best position properly to estimate the agricultural and money 
value of manures. 
XVII. — Account of the French Experimental Farm at Vaujours. 
Abridged from its ' Annals' by P. H. Fbere. 
Abstract of Contexts. — General Description — Drainage — Cost of Appa- 
ratus for Irrigation — The Night-Soil of Paris — Mode of applying Night- 
Soil — Course of Events at Vaujours — Lodgment of Crops — Balance- 
Sheet, 1860 — Experiments — Plan for future Cropping — Conclusion. 
Some few English farmers are probably aware that an Experi- 
mental Farm has been established in France to test the value of 
the sewage or night-soil taken from the cesspools of Paris, and 
the economy of its application by means of steam-pumps and the 
tubular system of irrigation. Not having heard further, they 
probably surmise that its career has not hitherto been a decided 
success : more than this they have not learned, and, if men of the 
old school, they do not care to inquire. Yet, if we look around, 
the sources of agricultural advancement are not so numerous nor 
so promising that we can afford to overlook even a slight prospect 
of reward : nor, again, are exact, trustworthy, detailed accounts 
so common or so easy of access that any such specimen can be 
passed by. Quite apart from the economical results obtained, such 
accounts, when conscientiously drawn up, are of great service to 
an art so poor in statistical knowledge as agriculture. If we can 
put them to no other use, we may dissect them with profit, as 
the Parisian shawl-merchant remodels the products of Cashmere 
when the pattern is not to the French taste. That these accounts 
are in this case conscientiously framed appears on the face of 
the reports ; indeed, in the liberal allowance made for wear 
and tear of dead stock, &c., they contrast very favourably with 
some of our one-sided estimates ; and for this the more credit is 
due, because from various mischances a serious deficit had to be 
faced. 
There is further reason for approaching these records in a 
kindly spirit, because the vituperative element does not enter 
into them. There is no preface of promiscuous and exaggerated 
invective against farmers and farming generally, in terms that 
are almost insulting to the very men whose ear it is most im- 
portant to gain, — men who naturally repudiate the fancy-portrait 
