210 
prince Albert’s plan of disposing town sewerage. 
PRINCE ALBERT’S PLAN OF DISPOSING- OF TOWN 
SEWERAGE. 
At a late meeting of the council of the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England, a plan was 
presented for their consideration, from his Roy¬ 
al Highness Prince Albert, one of the ’governors 
of the society, on turning the sewerage of towns, 
at present the cause of disease and pestilence, 
into a source of national wealth, by its applica¬ 
tion to purposes of agriculture. 
The plan proposed, was, to form a tank, with 
a perforated false bottom, upon which a filter¬ 
ing medium should be laid ; and to admit at one 
end the sewerage into the tank, below the false 
bottom, when, according to the principle of wa¬ 
ter regaining its own level, the sewerage liquid 
would rise through the filtering bed to its origi¬ 
nal level in the tank, and, provided the filtering 
medium had been of the proper nature and of 
sufficient thickness, it would be thus freed from 
all mechanical impurity, and would pass off 
into the drain, at the other end of the tank, as 
clean and clear as spring water. This simple 
and effective plan was illustrated by drawings, 
showing the vertical and horizontal sections of 
the tank, and by a neatly-constructed model of 
its external form and internal arrangements. 
It was also clearly shown by these sections, 
how the sewerage matter could be let into the 
tank, or shut off, when necessary, in the sim¬ 
plest manner, by means of common valves; and 
with what facility such a filtering tank might 
be applied to every existing arrangement of 
sewers, without requiring any alteration in 
their structure. The filtering medium having 
abstracted from the sewerage all extraneous 
matter, would, in all probability, become the 
richest manure, and could, at any time, by stop¬ 
ping the supply of sewerage, be taken out by a 
common laborer, with a shovel, and carted or 
shipped to any place thought most desirable. 
The solid matter, too, held in suspension by the 
sewerage, would probably form a very rich 
deposit at the bottom of the tank, of a substance 
approaching in its qualities to guano, and could 
be extracted by removing the false bottom, 
which rested on arches or vertical supporters 
over the sewerage below it in the tank, and 
could be easily made to lift up or take out for 
the purpose of such extraction. Two tanks 
might easily be constructed together, so that 
one might continue in operation while the other 
was being emptied. The experiment might be 
tried at any house drain in town or country; in 
fact, the prince had himself tried the operation 
on a small scale with apparent success; and 
while he thus suggested an important and ex¬ 
tensive application of the hydrostatical principle 
involved in the plan proposed, he wished to 
lay no claim to originality in the adoption of 
that well-known law of fluid bodies by which 
they make an effort, proportionate to their dis¬ 
placement, to regain their equilibrium. On that 
principle was founded, as he was well aware, 
the upward-filtering apparatus used by the 
Thames water companies. Prince Albert’s 
great object was by the simplest possible means 
to attain a great end; to effect an essential san¬ 
itary improvement, and at the same time to cre¬ 
ate a new source of national wealth, by the very 
means employed for the removal of a deadly 
nuisance, and the conversion of decomposing 
matter, highly noxious to animal life, into the 
most powerful nutriment for vegetation. He 
wished to offer no opinion on the details requir¬ 
ed to complete the plan proposed, nor on the 
mode of carrying it out in the most effective 
manner. Supposing it to be right in principle, 
its advantages, in an economical point of view, 
he conceived could only be ascertained by 
practical experience; and it was on that account 
that he wished to submit it to the consideration 
of the Agricultural Society, who might be better 
able to carry out the necessary experiments. It 
would remain to be decided what is chemically 
or mechanically the best, and what the cheap¬ 
est substance for the filter; what the best and 
cheapest construction of the tank; how long the 
sewerage will pass before the filter becomes 
choked; and how soon the filter could be suf¬ 
ficiently saturated to make it profitable as a 
manure. He had used as the filtering medium, 
the following substances:— 
1. Charcoal—admitted to be the most perfect 
filtering substance for drinking water, retaining 
effectually extraneous matters, and well known 
for its singular powers of purification. 
2. Gypsum, (plaster of Paris, or sulphate of 
lime,) recommended by agricultural chemists, 
for fixing ammonia and other volatile substan¬ 
ces, by the decomposition to which it becomes 
subject, when exposed to the action of volatile 
alkali. 
3. Clay, in its burnt state, would act mechan¬ 
ically as a filtering bed; and in its unburnt 
state, on account of its aluminous salts, has 
also the property, like gypsum, of fixing ammo¬ 
nia, or of decomposing the ammoniacal and 
other alkaline salts present in manure; and in 
either state would be cheaply procured. 
All these substances, it was thought, would in 
themselves be highly useful as manures, inde¬ 
pendently of the purpose they would subserve 
as agents for filtration, or of the additional 
amount of manuring matter they would receive 
from the sewerage which they purified. In thus 
incidentally referring to the substances he had 
himself employed for the filtering medium, he was 
well aware how many more of equal, if not su¬ 
perior value would suggest themselves to others, 
who, like himself, felt an interest in effecting 
the important object proposed. As he had giv¬ 
en no opinion on the general question of the 
liquid or solid application of manure, but had 
merely stated the grounds of preference, in a 
practical sense, of the solid form over the liquid 
for the purposes of the filtering operation under 
consideration, he entered into no discussion on 
the amount of manuring matter retained 
by the filter, compared with the soluble mat¬ 
ter that might pass through it along with the 
water, and remain in that liquid in a soluble, 
colorless, and transparent form; nor of the val¬ 
ue of such filtered water for agricultural pur¬ 
poses. He had confined his observations to. the 
agricultural value of the filtering bed, and the 
