EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
163 
of a town, in addition to the excreta of the inhabitants, and which, if 
applied by themselves to land, would be injurious to vegetation, yet, 
bearing as they do so small a proportion to the entire bulk of the sewage, 
they are lost sight of, and rendered perfectly harmless. 
“ On the further question, would the application of town sewage to 
land or to crops be likely to cause a nuisance, or be attended with dan¬ 
gerous consequences, the committee state, as the result of the evidence, 
that sewage, in the state in which it is found at the outfall of the sewers, 
even in the hottest weather, is very slightly offensive. If applied to the 
land in this state, and in such dressings as can be readily absorbed by the 
earth, no fear of nuisance need be felt, as the soil possesses the power to 
deodorise and separate from liquids all the manure which they contain, 
provided that too large a quantity be not applied, as the power of the soil 
has its limits ; but if the power of the soil be over-taxed, and very large 
dressings be applied, a nuisance will be created in the neighbourhood, 
and injury to wells and running streams would occur. 
“ The evidence on the question whether solid manure can be profitably 
manufactured from town sewage, leads to the conclusion a solid manure 
cannot be manufactured with profitable results.” 
The last clause but one of this report it would be well to 
remember—the deodorising power of the soil and its retain¬ 
ing of the elements necessary for the growth of plants. This, 
in principle, has been long known ; indeed, the ancients were 
acquainted with it, and Virgil adverts to it in his ‘ Georgies.^ 
Of late it has been extensively practised. Especially is this 
property possessed by burnt clay, the silicates in which 
undergo a most remarkable change on the application of 
heat; many of them, in their natural state, not being 
acted on by the most powerful acids, but on their being 
heated to redness they become perfectly soluble in them, 
“ Thus,^"^ says Liebig, “ experience in agriculture shows, 
that the production of vegetables on a given surface in¬ 
creases with the supply of certain matters, originally parts 
of the soil which had been taken up from it by plants—the 
excrements of man and animals. These are nothing more 
than matters derived from vegetable food, which in the 
vital processes of animals, or after their death, assume 
again the form under which they originally existed as parts 
of the soil.'’^ 
Well may we add, in vain Nature has protested against 
our blunders by punishing us, as she always does, when w^e 
neglect her laws. Vainly has she pointed out, by the pre¬ 
valence of plague and epidemics, that we were breaking her 
grand ordinance of perpetual rotation in decay and repro¬ 
duction, and by interfering with her cycle within cycle of 
continual change, 
