8 
Report of the Judges on the 
At the sewage pumping station there is a tank with an iron 
screen across it, which intercepts some of the solid matter from 
the sewage, and a man is engaged to keep this screen free. The 
matter removed from the sewage, which is a comparatively small 
quantity, is either used upon the contiguous garden or upon the 
farm. The; pumping is usually only carried on in the daytime. 
At night the sewage is stored in the sewers, and the average 
daily quantity pumped is 950,000 gallons. The quantity of 
coal used daily to raise the sewage averages 21 cwt. The 
sewage having been screened, it is pumped through an 18-inch 
iron delivery main, having a 15-inch iron branch delivery 
main, to one part of the farm ; from thence it is distributed 
in earthenware pipe-carriers laid in embankments above the 
surface of the land, which vary in size from 18 inches to 
9 inches in diameter. The distribution of the sewage over 
the land irrigated is through earth-cut channels, which are 
ploughed or dug out from time to time as required. A small 
portion only of the farm, about 5 acres in extent, has been 
under-drained with 2-inch pipe-drains 60 feet apart and 3 feet 
deep. Very little effluent was flowing through these drains at 
the time of our inspection, but the whole of the fields of the 
sewage farm are surrounded by deep ditches, which tend very 
materially to drain the subsoil. We were informed that if the 
circumstances had admitted of a greater depth being given to 
the land drains, they would have been placed lower, but the 
falls in this case would not admit of the drains being laid 
deeper. 
A great variety of crops are grown upon this sewage farm, 
which is treated as a combined sewage farm and market-garden. 
It is somewhat singular that the peculiar crop, whatever it may 
be, that suits the neighbourhood, seems to flourish under sewage. 
Lucerne is not a plant which we would select as the most likely 
to be benefited by sewage, yet in Paris it is almost the only 
green crop grown on the sewaged land, it being the favourite 
provender of the district. So onions, that are grown in great 
profusion around Bedford, seem to flourish upon sewaged land 
and appear the most profitable crop to grow. The following 
table (page 9), which was handed to us by the farm manager, 
shows the acreage and the value of the produce for the four 
years 1875 to 1878 ; and an examination of the accounts for 
1878 showed that the income and expenditure had been as in 
the table on page 10. 
