126 
REPORT ON THE INDUSTRY OF MANURES. 
the economy of the distributive operation. But inventive research and practical ex¬ 
periment are rapidly proceeding side by side, and every year, not to say every month, 
sees some fresh truth elicited, some previous “impossibility” achieved. 
Utilization of Urban 'Ejecta as Manure. —The separation of surface-water from 
sewage is, by a certain number, confidently relied on to solve the problem of sewage 
utilization, in conformity with Mr. F. O. Ward’s formula,—“ the rainfall to the river, 
the sewage to the soil.” Others are of opinion that sewage, even when diluted by 
admixture with rain-swollen brooks, may be economically pumped on the land. A 
third party believe gravitation to be the only economical distributive power for sewage, 
and open gutters contoured along the undulating ground the only channels suited for 
its conveyance. 
On these mechanical questions the Reporter, as a chemist, has of course no opinion 
to offer. But, that the reckless squandering of town-sewage to the sea, if continued 
on its present prodigious scale, must, in a few generations, justify the worst forebodings 
of Liebig, and that the same steam-power which has induced the evil can alone supply 
the remedy, the Reporter confidently believes. 
And here, perhaps, is the place to interpose a few remarks, in most respectful de¬ 
precation of the support which Liebig, in several of his works, and more especially in 
his latest publication,* affords to the cesspool system of urban defecation. He devotes 
an entire chapter (the seventh) to a description of the movable cesspools, or casks 
upon wheels, employed in the soldiers’ barracks, in several garrison towns of Baden, 
to receive and carry away the whole of the ejecta, fluid and solid. He states the aver¬ 
age cost of these cesspool-carts to be between £9 and £10 a piece; their term of dura¬ 
tion, about five years ; and their maintenance-charge about 15 per cent, of their first 
cost. He adds, that the sale of the manure collected and conveyed away in these carts, 
from several garrisons, numbering in all 8000 men, brings in an amiually increasing 
sum; the receipts having risen from £285 in 1852, to £680 in 1858, and the ten¬ 
dency of the price being upward still. Upon this system he bestows encomiums, made 
weighty by his illustrious name and eminent authority. “ Sandy wastes,” he says, 
“ more particularly in the vicinity of Rastadt and Carlsruhe, have thus been turned 
into cornfields of great fertility.” And he adds that “ there might thus be established 
a perfect circulation of the conditions of life, which would provide 8000 men with 
bread, year after year, without in the least reducing the productiveness of the fields on 
which the corn is grown.” He further devotes much space in his Appendix to a re¬ 
port upon Japenese husbandry, addressed to the Minister of Agriculture at Berlin, by 
Dr. H. Maron, and containing a detailed account of the Japanese method of urban de¬ 
fecation, which is also accomplished by a system of movable cesspools, lifted out and 
carried through the open streets by hand. 
The Japanese, Dr. Maron states, use open privies, not constructed, as in Germany, 
in some remote corner of the yard, but forming an essential part of the interior of their 
dwellings. The aperture is level with the ground, and beneath it is set a bucket or 
earthen pot, for removal, when full, by human hands. The Coolies thus employed 
are to be met, he tells us, of an evening, marching in long strings along all the roads 
leading out of the Japanese towns, each Coolie bearing two buckets or earthen pots of 
night soil for conveyance to the neighbouring farms. Caravans of pack-horses, simi¬ 
larly laden, are sent, he states, 200 or 300 miles into the interior; and canal-boats 
leave each town daily as regularly as the mail, each loaded by Coolies with high-piled 
buckets of the precious stuff, the effluvia of which, it is admitted, render the task of 
conducting these barges “a species of martyrdom.” 
It is precisely from this degrading and loathsome kind of drudgery that England is 
now resolutely bent on emancipating mankind; while yet restoring to the land, quite 
as faithfully as the Japanese, the fertilizing residua of human food. It is precisely 
against what may be termed the “ martyrdom of stench,” and the still fiercer martyr¬ 
doms of blood-pollution and loathsome pestilence which stench engenders, that the 
English Sanitary Reformers protest and struggle with all their force. And the Re¬ 
porter is convinced that he will faithfully interpret their desire, in inviting for the 
* ‘ The Natural Laws of Husbandry/ by Justus von Liebig. Edited by J. Blyth, M.D., 
Professor of Chemistry in Queen’s College, Cork. London; Walton and Maberly. 1863. 
