114 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, November 22, 1859. 
or keep it from me.’ ” If ever it gets into a Louse give a little 
heat, to change the mist to invisible vapour, and open only a 
little of the top ventilators when the tire is strongest to let the 
heated moisture escape; but keep every other cranny and air¬ 
hole shut to keep out the fog, and shut the small openings at 
the top early in the afternoon. Breathing over and over again 
during the night the same clear atmosphere will injure them 
much less than enveloping them in a cold fog bath. R. Fish. 
THE TINES AT STOCKWOOD. 
In reading Mr. Fish’s description of the Gardens at Stock- 
wood in The Cottage Gardener of the 11th of October, page 
21, in speaking of the fruit department, it is there said the 
present gardener thought the Vines were planted too deep, and 
had, therefore, raised them. Now this statement I can positively 
deny, being engaged there as foreman at the time the borders 
were made and the Vines planted. And the fact of their 
producing large thick leaves, and strong vigorous wood, well 
matured, producing every season a splendid crop of beautiful 
Grapes; and such Grapes, I say without fear of contradiction, 
could not be excelled, if equalled, in any part of Great Britain. 
Now the above description, which is quite a correct one, is not 
at all consistent with deep planting, as every one at all acquainted 
with Grape-growing must know. I therefore think it would be 
both unfair and unjust to the late gardener, Mr. Busby, to allow 
such a statement to pass without notice, knowing as I do that 
he was quite enthusiastic in shallow planting and root-pruning, 
and had practised it for more than twenty years, which all the 
fruit trees at Stockwood will prove, if their roots have not been 
disturbed.—W m. Rattray, By fleet . 
HOUSE AND TOWN SEWAG-E. 
No more striking monument remains as evidence of Roman 
wisdom than the sewers—the Cloaca—of then- city. These are 
among the most ancient and most massive structures of Rome, 
and with the ruins of aqueducts, roads, and bridges, bear un- 
mistakeable evidence that the early Romans laboured chiefly to 
provide their city with public works of utility. 
To the shame ot Englishmen, on the contrary, be it recorded, 
that drainage is the last subject of consideration with them when 
either a public or a private edifice is constructed., It is to their 
shame, because it shows an ignorant neglect of a provision 
demanded by convenience, decency, and health; and still further 
is it to their shame, betraying, as it does, a wilful abandonment of 
the best and most economical fertiliser of their soils. 
That it is the best of manures we testify after a very lengthened 
experience. We have tided it as a fertiliser in competitive expe¬ 
riments, and in every instance did it produce crops equal or 
superior to those dressed with either guano or stable manure. 
We are glad to have Dr. Daubeny, Professor of Agriculture at 
Oxford, sustaining this result of our experience. “ I conceive,” 
he says, “ that our descendants will marvel at the inattention to 
chemical science evinced by the present generation of farmers in 
importing from distant regions, such as South America, substi¬ 
tutes—and those, perhaps, but imperfect ones—for that fertilising 
material of which the greater part is allowed to deposit itself 
unprofitably in the beds of our rivers.” 
The extreme value of this fertilising material we shall par¬ 
ticularise more fully hereafter, and will only now record this 
as a proved axiom :—■ 
The sewage of every household is manure sufficient 
FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ALL THE VEGETABLE FOOD IT CONSUMES. 
Unless the surface water arising from rains is kept separate 
from the sewage of a town, the vast bulk of needless water 
renders the carriage of the mixture almost a prohibition upon its 
distant use; but this objection has no force—indeed, does not 
exist to any detached house with a space of ground around it 
sufficient for the consumption of the sewage of that house. 
The first important arrangement is— 
The Collection of the Sewage. —If the house be on a very 
steep declivity it may be collected in the following mode, first 
adopted and thus described by Cuthbert W. Johnson, Escp, of 
Waldronhurst, near Croydon : — 
“I have the advantage of a considerable fall between the house 
and the kitchen garden, yet that circumstance is not essential to 
the success of the plan : for even in the ease of a perfect level, 
it would only bo necessary to add a common iron lifting pump to 
the second tank ; or the object might be accomplished by even 
one tank only, if furnished with a division. My plan was to 
test the possibility of filtering the entire sewage of the house 
through a filter of sand sufficiently fine to remove almost all the 
mechanically suspended matters of the sewage, so as to render 
the filtered liquid available as a rich liquid manure, without 
being offensive to those who had the use of the garden. For 
this purpose I had two tanks constructed of bricks and mortar, 
and lined with Parker’s cement, of about five feet cube each. 
Into the first, marked No. 1 in the annexed plan, all the sewage 
of the house is discharged through an iron pipe of 41-inch bore. 
Section of the Sewage-system at Mr. Johnson’s, 
on a scale of 30 feet to the inch. 
A. The house. 
IS. Pipe convey¬ 
ing sewage 
to tank No. 1. 
C. C. C. Ground-line planted with 
shruhs. 
D. Plug regulating the discharge 
to the filter No. 2. 
E. The filter. F. The kitchen garden. 
This tank is furnished with an iron pipe of the same diameter 
which (regulated by a long-handled plug from the top of the 
tank marked d) discharges the sewage as it is needed, from the 
tank No. 1 into the tank No. 2. This lower tank is also of a 
cube, equal to about five feet in diameter. This is furnished 
with a filter, through which the liquid portion of the sewage 
finds its way ; and is thence drawn off from the bottom of the 
tank by means of iron pipes of three quarters of an inch bore 
to convenient places in the garden. The filter (e) is placed 
(resting on bricks) about eighteen inches from the bottom of the 
tank. The bottom of the filter is formed of perforated tiles 
used by malsters for their kiln floors ; on this is laid a layer of 
gravel, about two inches thick; on this about two inches of coarse 
sand; and on the top of the sand (to prevent disturbance by the 
rushing in of the sewage from the upper tank) another layer of 
the maltsters’ tiles. Thus constructed, the sewage finds its way 
through the filter with sufficient rapidity for the copious supply 
of the kitchen garden. As thus prepared the liquid manure 
passes through so as to possess but little smell, and without 
leaving any obnoxious appearance on the surface of the ground, 
I needly hardly say that the effect of this liquid is exceedingly 
powerful; and we have noticed it as remarkably so in the case 
of some newly-planted beds of Asparagus and Rhubarb which 
have been irrigated with it. And, in fact, there is no doubt of 
its value for ensuring the rapid growth of all kinds of newly- 
planted culinary vegetables. I have so ai’ranged the pipes in my 
kitchen garden that I can irrigate to any portion of it by merely 
turning a cock. This plan of filtering seems, in fact, to remove 
all the objections that can be possibly urged against the use of 
the house sewage. And in the case of gardens, both for the 
amateur and the poor cottager, I feel convinced that, by such a 
mode as this, many of the difficulties of incessant cropping and 
little-varied exhausting rotations may be successfully met. The 
waste of fertilising matter in such sewage is, in fact, so much 
larger than is commonly supposed (a loss by the ordinary mode 
of constructing these tanks disguised in every possible way), that 
I feel assured it only needs the adoption of some such a mode as 
that which I have described, of rendering its use no longer dis¬ 
tasteful to the occupants of the house, to ensure its almost uni¬ 
versal employment .The amount of sewage is much larger than 
is commonly understood; and in dry weather, when the demands 
of the gardener are larger, it is, we find, very easy to increase its 
bulk, in case of need, by pumping water into the tanks through 
the ordinary means.” 
At another residence, also on a declivity, a series of connected 
3-inch earthenware pipes conveys the entire house-sewage at once 
to a well situated as at No. 2 in the foregoing sketch. The well 
is brick-lined and cemented, is four feet in diameter and sixteen 
feet deep; no filter whatever is employed, and a common lifting 
