278 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ September 25, 1890. 
rather tender for general culture out of doors except in favoured 
climates. 
THE LIVING EARTH. 
(Continued from page 255.') 
“ Manurial value ” is a term used by chemists to express the amount 
of nitrogen that may be present. Now I do not doubt the ability of 
chemists to make a quantitative estimation of nitrogen, nor their 
power of informing farmers of the extent to which they may or may 
not have been cheated when they purchase artificial manures. I 
would humbly suggest, however, that the real practical manurial 
value depends not only upon the amount of plant food present, but 
also upon whether the plant food is present in a form in which it 
can be digested and exhaustively utilised by the plant. For the latter 
information, which is of the highest importance, I would sooner apply 
to a practical farmer or gardener than to a chemist. A chemist, for 
instance, who had regard to his analyses and nothing else might tell us 
that nut shells had a certain dietetic value, but ordinary men and 
monkeys know better than that. He might tell us that gin was richer 
in certain dietetic ingredients than ginger beer, but we know that ginger 
beer is the better article of diet. Again, guano has a far higher manurial 
value than “ rich garden mould ”—such as is got by mixing earth with 
organic refuse—but if we do not dilute our guano to the same level, so 
to say, as our rich garden mould we may kill our plants. To declare 
that rich garden mould is of low manurial value is absurd, because we 
know that in it plants of all kinds reach the highest development which 
is attainable. Farmers and market gardeners will tell you that artificial 
manures have “ got no bottom in them,” that their use is, so to say, a 
speculation ; and if climatic conditions are unfavourable when the 
artificials are applied, the money spent on them is lost for ever. With 
organic refuse, however, the case is entirely different, and the effect of 
the application of organic matter, especially of human origin, to the 
soil is plainly discernible for three or four years. Solid organic 
matter cannot be washed away. It nitrifies slowly, and doles out 
the nitrates to the roots of the plants in proportion as they are 
needed. 
From every point of view—scientific, sanitary, moral, economic—I 
feel strongly that dwellers in the country should take warning by the 
towns. They should revert to the cleanly and decent habits of our 
forefathers, and keep the sanitary offices away from the main structure 
of the house, and not, as is the filthy custom of the present day, bring 
them almost into the bedrooms. They should keep solid matters out of 
the house drains, and see that they are decently buried in the living 
earth every day, and they should replace the drains by gutters and 
filter all the household slops by applying them to the top of a different 
piece of cultivated ground every day. Whether an ordinary watering 
pot, or a tank upon wheels drawn by a horse be necessary for accom¬ 
plishing this latter object, will depend upon the size of the establish¬ 
ment ; but only those who have systematically pursued this plan, as I 
have done, can know the vigour which is imparted to hedgerows, 
shrubberies, fruit trees, or forest trees, by a tolerably frequent dose of 
household slops. There is no difficulty in doing this, provided the will 
be present—the will, that is, to combine your duty towards your neigh¬ 
bour with an act which is profitable to yourself. 
Finally, you dwellers in the country, whether squires, who are 
the owners of broad acres, or occupants of modest villas with a garden, 
or, still more, if you be cottagers with an allotment, where it ought to 
be, round your cottage, what I have to say to you is this :— 
1. That sewage, being a nuisance, although a necessity, it is to 
your interest not unnecessarily to increase its quantity or its offensive¬ 
ness. 
2. Keep solid matters out of the drains, for by doing this you will 
prevent the putrefaction of the solid, and you will find the purification 
of a liquid by filtration through the earth is affected with ease, which is 
proportionate to the thinness of the fluid. 
3. Remove all solid matter every day from the immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood of the house, and bury it in the top layer of cultivated 
ground. Pour the household slops on to the surface of the garden, and 
do not make the mistake of attempting what is known as subsoil 
irrigation. If these directions be followed I feel sure that by no 
possibility can you be troubled by sewer gas, and I also believe that 
you may drink the water from your surface wells with safety. 
I am, as some of you know, no mere theorist—I practise what I 
preach, and have now some nine years’ experience, experience which 
has served to strengthen my opinions, and enables me unreservedly to 
exhort others to pursue a similar course with myself. In Hampshire I 
have a garden, and adjoining it are twenty cottages, which I also own, 
inhabited by about a hundred persons. These cottages are scavenged 
every day, and the scavengings are buried in the garden. The caretaker’s 
first duty is to the cottages—to remove filth and bury it, to whitewash, 
paint, and to keep decent. His second duty is to the garden, where he 
acts as under gardener. In the garden, which has an extent of about 
1? acre, I am obliged in self-defence (what a hardship !) to raise the 
biggest crops possible. This garden not only supplies my London house 
with a variety of fruit, flowers, and vegetables (Cabbage, Potatoes, 
Carrots, Turnips, Parsnips, Beet, Salsafy, Lettuces, Artichokes of both 
kinds, Peas, Beans, Asparagus, Seakale, Peaches, Plums, Apples, Pears, 
Figs, Strawberries, Currants, Raspberries, &c.), which I doubt if I could 
purchase for £50 a-year of the neighbouring greengrocer ; but the over¬ 
plus, which is marketable, just about pays the wages of the caretaker 
and under gardener. I cannot help thinking that the combination of 
market gardening with cottage owning in country places opens up the 
possibility of an industry which is at once profitable and advantageous 
to all concerned, and affords a good chance of solving a sanitary 
difficulty. 
I am addressing myself to dwellers in the country, but I should like 
to say to town dwellers that complete sanitation is impossible unless 
cultivated land be brought into tolerably close relationship with the 
dwelling. At present our sanitary arrangements are magnificently 
begun and seldom completed, and while we almost uniformly leave a 
most dangerous loose end to our sanitary measures we shut our eyes to 
it, and blow the trumpet of self-satisfaction as if the sanitary millennium 
had begun. The Allotment Act, as affording an outlet for organic 
refuse, ought not to be without its effect upon sanitation, and it is to be 
hoped that the masses will some day wake up to the great importance, 
from the moral and sanitary standpoint, of providing every dwelling 
with an adequate outlet. As things go at present I have very little 
doubt that the agricultural labourer, with his cottage and garden and 
12s. a week, is infinitely better off than the town artisan on 25s., who 
pays dearly for pigging it in overcrowded rooms, in which a cleanly and 
decent existence is impossible. 
I have been reading the last volume of our transactions, and in it I 
find a very interesting paper by Dr. Sykes, who quotes Dr. Corfield, 
who, in his turn, is quoting Sir Henry Acland, to the effect that the 
disappearance of the great cities of antiquity was due to pestilence, 
rather than war. We must all admit the possibility of such an assump¬ 
tion, and certainly no one can ponder upon the disappearance of 
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman civilisation without 
speculating upon the cause, and without applying the lesson to ourselves, 
and asking ourselves how much longer is our British civilisation to 
continue 1 Nationalities seem as mortal as the individuals which com¬ 
pose them. If great nations are destroyed by neglect of sanitary laws, 
and if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanitary measures, 
there is at least one race upon the globe which is worthy of profound 
study by all who concern themselves with public health. This race is 
the Chinese, who have seen all the great nations of antiquity in and out, 
who were probably a great people in the days of Moses and before, and 
whose thrifty myriads are even now successfully contending with the 
Anglo-Saxon race in America and Australasia. The Chinese, as is well 
known, have had to contend with national calamities of a most stupend¬ 
ous kind. In our own days we hear of floods and famines which claim 
their millions of victims, and yet the race continues to increase in such 
a way, and to overflow its natural boundaries to such an extent, that it 
is certain, even without the exact returns of a Registrar-General, that 
the birth rate must very considerably exceed the death rate, and must 
have done so in an average way during the 3000 or 4000 years that the 
Chinese nation had existed. I think there is no doubt that the Chinese 
will see us out, as they have seen the other great nations of the world 
out, and the reason, I believe, is obvious. The Chinese are the most 
thrifty nation in the world. In China nothing is wasted, and all organic 
refuse is ultimately returned to the soil. Agriculture is in China a 
sacred duty, and the Chinese have got a firm grasp of the elementary 
principle that if the fertility of the earth is to be maintained we must 
constantly replenish it. The nineteenth volume of the Health Exhibi¬ 
tion literature contains a most interesting series of papers on China by 
Surgeon-General Gordon, Mr. Hippisley, and Dr. Dudgeon of Pekin. 
The papers by Dr. Dudgeon are especially worthy of study, for many 
years of residence among the Chinese have impressed him with the fact 
that we have much to learn from them. I have not the pleasure 
of Dr. Dudgeon’s acquaintance, but were he here I am sure he 
would give a general support to the propositions 1 have laid before 
you. 
This question is a national one, and concerns us all. Every country 
squire ought, in these matters, to set a good example to his tenants. If he 
does not set the example of increasing the fertility of the soil by the 
daily addition to it of all the organic refuse of his country mansion, he 
cannot command our sympathy when he goes without his full rent. If 
a landowner embarks on a great building scheme he ought to keep the 
sanitation in bis own hands. If a well-known landowner has done this 
—if he had preserved his autonomy on his own estate, and if he had, by 
a rational use of the railway, transferred the daily scavengings of his 
valuable city estate to his broad acres in Bedfordshire, perhaps his right 
of way on his London estate would not have been confiscated, and per¬ 
haps he would not have been obliged to remit 25 per cent, of his Bed¬ 
fordshire rental. As it is, he allowed the vestry to do his sanitation for 
him, and by so doing lost his autonomy. Who can see how far the 
process of confiscation which has set in will ultimately reach 1 This 
question has an immediate personal interest for all who derive their 
income from the soil. I feel sure that the clergy would do well to 
enforce by example as well as by precept the old injunction to “ re¬ 
plenish the earth and subdue it.” If they do not they must expect to 
go without their tithes. Improvement in this direction is only to be 
attained by rousing the public conscience. So soon as the majority of 
individuals is impressed with the fact that it is wicked to foul our 
streams and starve the soil, and that our individual responsibility does 
not end, even though the fouling and starving be done by a “ Board,” 
so much the better will it be for the public health and national wealth. 
Parliament has compelled us to hand over our responsibilities to public 
authorities, with the consequence that the individual has lost his liberty 
and independence, and is drifting into a condition of sanitary 
imbecility.—G. Y. Poore, M.D. 
