11 
From the above incontestable principle, the Author showed 
that the daily waste occasioned by the enforcement of the 
present system on the inhabitants of London, is equivalent 
to 2,723 tons of butcher's meat, potatoes, and bread ; and 
860,000 gallons of milk, beer, and other liquid food, a loss 
which would speedily reduce the country to a state of barren- 
ness, were it not for the importation of large quantities of 
food and manure from foreign countries. But guano would 
not last for ever. If the produce of the Chincha Islands, 
which afford it most abundantly and of the best quality, were 
reserved for the sole use of Britain, they would be exhausted 
in sixty years at the present rate of consumption. Then as 
to the importation of cattle, corn, and bone manure ; such 
supplies would continue only so long as foreign governments 
remained ignorant of the permanent injury inflicted on their 
fields. Liebig has already complained that, if the exportation 
of bones continued at the present rate, the German soil would 
become gradually exhausted. 
'I'he Author, moreover, insisted that we ought not to be 
satisfied with merely keeping our agriculture from decline; 
but that, with a rapidly increasing population, the wisest 
course would be to reserve such supplies of guano as we may 
be able to obtain, for the purpose for which it would seem to 
be designed by nature, that of forming a fertile soil where 
sterility at present exists. 
The first step with a view of putting a stop to the present 
waste, would be to prohibit the needless introduction of 
organic matter into the sewage. For instance, slaughter- 
houses should only be permitted in the country, and even 
there should be placed under such regulations as would secure 
the proper disposal of the blood and offal. Then again, the 
drainage of intramural burial grounds was enjoined by Act of 
Parliament, and thus the pollution of sew'ers was considerably 
increased. The body, after death, ougfit, in accordance with 
the Divine ordinance, to be permitted to return to the dust 
