Use of Town Sewage as Mamire. 
135 
have seen the tcndencj' to reversion to their wild form rapidly 
develop itself by a continuance of the same circumstances. 
Carrots, however, in their cultivated form present a wider differ- 
ence from their wild state than do parsnips ; they take a greater 
time to civilize, and consequently we should not expect them to 
revert to their wild condition so readily, and indeed it will 
generally be found that they die away if left to chance.* 
As regards turnips it will be observed as a rule that any sorts 
which have often been grown in the same land have a tendency 
to degenerate ; hence finger-and-loe will in such cases prevail. 
New varieties at first maintain their form much better. Swedish 
turnips, in their hybrid nature being farther removed from the 
wild type on the same ground, will be found to present less ten- 
dency to finger-and-toe than the common turnips. 
General Conclusions. — From the foregoing remarks it will be 
seen that finger-and-toe in roots is not viewed by me as a disease, 
in the strict sense of that term, but as a natural result of the early 
stage of change from wildness to civilization. I'he enumerated 
experiments seem to show that finger-and-toe is the midway from 
wildness to cultivation ; and our observations upon the circum- 
stances connected with cultivated root crops, that the malforma- 
tion in them is the result of degeneration from cultivation to 
wildness. 
Cirencester, Nov. 23, 1853. 
VI. — On the use of Toicn Sewage as 3Ianiire. By J. Thomas 
Way, Consulting Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society 
of England. 
In the spring of last year (1853) I delivered before this Society 
a lecture on the treatment of sewage matters and their appli- 
cation as manure, and at the request of Mr. Pusey I now repro- 
duce the subject of that lecture in a concise form for the present 
Journal, with such additional information as I have been able to 
obtain in the interval. The daily increasing desire of town popu- 
lations to render their habitations more cleanly and more healthy, 
and the necessity in which the agriculturist finds himself of 
paying the utmost attention to the collection and utilising of 
* There is on the College Farm, in a -waste place by a quarry, a patch of pars- 
nips derived from a garden which once occupied the spot. I have watched them 
from the time the cultivation ceased — now five years — and though they get wilder 
year by year, having roots much forked, yet the leaves are still for the most part 
without hairs. 
