HE POET ON THE INDTJSTEY OF MANUEES. 
123 
of human thought. This reasoning is altogether independent of the accuracy of our 
scientific knowledge. This book is suited to the extent of our knowledge as it is, and 
has been so for 3300 years. We do not believe that a single work can be produced on 
any of the natural or experimental sciences, written a hundred years ago, in which some 
gross errors cannot he discovered. All such hooks have grown old. Here is a hook 
written 3300 years ago still green, and in which apparent discrepancies from advancing 
knowledge invariably prove the germ of fresh agreements.” 
The impossibility of producing a book thus adapted to the whole domain of science, 
and the whole march of time, renders it a miracle of the highest order, and one, of all 
others, fitted to convince us, by internal evidence, that in the words of the Bible we have 
the very words of God. 
Let your enlightened recognition of the facts of science be ever accompanied with 
earnest study of revealed truth ; and, while you are active and zealous in the duties of 
your worldly calling, be “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” 
REPORT OH THE INDUSTRY OP MANURES. 
BY A. W. HOFMANN, PH.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 
{From the Reports of the Juries of the International.'Exhibition .) 
(Continued from p. 90.) 
Modern Historical Events connected with the Development of the Manurial In¬ 
dustry. —But, were England a more signal offender than she is, or ever has been, 
against what may be termed the manurial equilibrium of the world, she might plead 
her justification in the train of modern historical events which have brought her 
manurial industry into its present remarkable pliasis,—a phasis purely transitional, 
and which marks the crisis of a momentous revolution, even now in course of accom¬ 
plishment. 
The events here alluded to, like the revolution in which they are culminating, have 
their common origin in the memorable invention of the steam-engine by Watt. 
The new motive power placed by Watts’s genius at the disposal of mankind, after 
having transformed in succession every other main branch of human industry—the 
spinning and weaving of raiment, for example ; the arts of locomotion, by land and 
by sea; all the various forms of brute drudgery, such as lifting, hewing, pumping, 
grinding, etc.; all the technical plastic arts, from the shaping of the most stubborn 
metals to the moulding of the most delicate clay—in a word, after having lightened 
for mankind all the other forms of toil, is now making its way into the farm, and im¬ 
pressing upon the operations of husbandry an equally signal revolution. 
It is important to observe that the transformations which have preceded this final 
and most momentous change of all, have not only prepared the way for it, but have, 
at the same time, rendered its advent an indispensable necessity ; as a very brief con¬ 
sideration will show. 
It is, in the first place, by the operation of steam -power that the handicrafts, for¬ 
merly pursued by families dispersed in villages over the whole surface of the land, 
have been replaced by manufactures , conducted in colossal factories, determining the 
agglomeration of enormous populations, in rapidly developed towns and cities, located 
usually (for the convenience of trade) upon streams and rivers leading to the sea. 
Food lias naturally followed population ; and corn and cattle, vegetables and fruit, 
are daily poured from the country into the towns, in streams of constantly-increasing 
magnitude. The quantity of fertilizing residua resulting from the consumption of 
these provisions, and requiring, in fair husbandry, restoration to the distant fields 
from which they come, undergoes, of course, proportionate augmentation; and the 
problem of their reconveyance to the land has been, and still is, one of annually in¬ 
creasing difficulty. 
During the earlier development of the factory system, the old mode of urban de¬ 
fecation, by means of cesspools emptied periodically, was in vogue ; and much of the 
night-soil produced in the great manufacturing towns found its way back from these 
stagnant receptacles to the land. 
