September 20, 1890. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
39 
Bedford, a Marquis of Montacute, an Earl of West¬ 
moreland, an Earl of Northumberland, an Earl of 
Salisbury, an Earl of Kent, the celebrated Earl of 
Warwick, a Lord Latimer, a Lord Abergavenny, an 
Archbishop of York, and an Earl Marshal of England. 
On the day of my visit to Axwell Park, by the 
kind permission of Sir Henry Clavering, the district 
flower show was held in the park, and a more charming 
position for one it has never been my lot to witness. The 
weather being gloriously fine, it was visited by thou¬ 
sands of persons from Newcastle and the surrounding 
villages. The vegetables were most excellent. Sub¬ 
stantial prizes being offered by the committee, brought 
together a large number of competitors. To give some 
idea of the great interest that is taken in this locality 
in the culture of Leeks, one special prize, offered by 
G. 1L Ramsay, Esq., was a silver cup value six guineas, 
and two pounds in money, for the best three specimens, 
besides other valuable prizes offered by the committee. 
It is needless to say that the competition in this class 
was very keen, and some extraordinary samples were 
exhibited.— J. B. 
-- 
COTTAGE SANITATION. 
I am convinced that in our sanitary arrangements we 
have not sufficiently distinguished between the living 
mould of the surface and the dead earth of the subsoil. 
The living mould is our only efficient scavenger, which 
thrives and grows fat upon every kind of organic refuse ; 
our only efficient filter, a filter which swells and offers 
an impassable barrier to infective particles, a filter 
which affords a sure protection to our surface wells. 
When we perforate the living humus with a pipe, and 
take our dirty water to the subsoil, we, as it were, prick 
a hole in our filter, and every chemist knows what 
that means. In order to keep the soil healthy, to keep 
up its appetite for dirt and its power of digestion, the 
only thing necessary is tillage. Well-cultivated soil, 
which is compelled to produce good crops, has 
never yet been convicted of causing any danger to 
health. 
Sanitation is purely an agricultural question, and in 
the country, where every cottage has, or should have, 
its patch of garden, there ought to be no difficulty in 
the daily removal of the refuse from the house and in 
applying it to agricultural purposes, without any risk 
of contaminating the water supply. Given the patch 
of garden, the only thing necessary to bring about this, 
the only complete form of sanitation, is the will to do 
it—the will, that is, to do a profit to one’s self without 
the possibility of damaging one’s neighbour. This, 
unfortunately, is rarely forthcoming, in spite of the 
Christian religion and the Education Act, and we go 
on, even in country places, polluting our streams and 
wells, with our minds agitated, as well they may be, 
as to when our water will become too poisonous to 
drink, and where we shall turn for a pure supply in 
the future. 
Sanitation is not an engineering question, and it is 
not a chemical question, and the more of engineering 
and chemistry we apply to sanitation the more difficult 
is the purifying agriculture. This, at least, has been 
the practical result in this country. The only engineer¬ 
ing implements which the cottager with a bit of garden 
requires for the sanitation are a watering pot and spade, 
and if his garden be an allotment away from the cottage 
a wheelbarrow may become necessary. The cottager, 
to whom the produce of his bit of land is a matter of 
consequence, will endeavour to fertilise as much land 
as possible with the organic refuse at his disposal, and 
as long as this endeavour is made there need be no fear 
of failure, either from the agricultural or sanitary point 
of view. When, however, an engineer, by means of 
water under pressure, has collected the organic refuse 
of a province at one spot, has diluted it a thousand-fold, 
and endeavours to submit it to a mock purification, by 
means of the least amount of land possible, failure is 
inevitable, both in the agricultural and sanitary sense. 
It was in 1848 that the advice to “ drain ” was tendered 
with a light heart, by the'pioneers of modern sanitation, 
who thought it would be an easy thing to purify the 
sewage and make a profit from it. Tho Thames, the 
Liffey, the Clyde, the Mersey, and the Irwell are a 
standing testimony to the failure of these great en¬ 
gineering schemes, and I would remind you that the 
last engineering scheme put forward with regard to the 
sewage of London—viz., to convey it all to the Essex 
coast and cast it into the sea—is not only a most lame 
and impotent conclusion, quite unanticipated by the 
pioneers of ’48, but it is an experiment which, like our 
previous experiments, may be productive of unforeseen 
results. 
I wish to say, emphatically, that the manorial value 
of human excrement is enormous, and that it produces 
all kinds of fruits, flowers, and vegetables in the 
highest perfection. I speak from a practical experience 
of nine years, and my belief is that soil cannot be made 
more fertile than by mixing it with solid excremental 
matter. It is quite true, no doubt, that the manurial 
value of urine is very great, but being fluid it is not so 
easily retained at the spot where the agriculturist wants 
it; and we know that when fresh and undiluted it is 
very dangerous to herbage. The fact is that plants 
absorb their nutriment from very dilute solutions ; and 
it has been found that a fluid containing about "2 per 
cent, is the optimum for plant culture. Ordinary 
urine, therefore, which contains 4 per cent of solids, is 
twenty times too strong ; -but if it be applied to the 
soil in its state of optimum dilution much of the liquid 
will necessarily soak out of the reach of the roots. 
Manurial value is a practical matter rather than a 
chemical problem, and I have no doubt whatever that 
those who assert the manurial value of earth-closet 
manure to be low are making a very serious practical 
mistake ; and I have no doubt that arguments based 
on the theoretical manurial value of sewage, as a whole 
or of its several ingredients, are worthless in helping 
us to decide whether it is advisable or otherwise to 
keep solid matters out of the drains. What use is 
there in discussing the “manurial value” of sewage in 
the face of the deliberate declaration of that eminent 
agriculturist, Mr. Clare Sewell Read, made a few 
months since in the Journal of the. Royal Agricultural 
Society ? “Sewage,” say3 Mr. Read, “has come to be 
regarded by all sensible people simply as a nuisance to 
be got rid of.” And he goes on to state that, owing to 
the unmanageable quantities of water which have to be 
dealt with, sewage is ruinous to all grain crops and all 
other farm crops except Rye Grass. 
The composition of sewage as it flows from towns is 
so doubtful, and must be so variable, that no sensible 
man would let it run over his farm. Chemicals and 
antiseptics are very abundant at the present day, and 
they are very largely used to lessen the dangers which 
are inherent in our present system of sanitation. Anti¬ 
septics, however, which stop the growth of putrefactive 
microbes, also check the growth of nitrifying organisms, 
and are deadly poison to plants. All town sewage is 
liable to contain dangerous chemicals, which must 
render the manurial value a very minus quantity, the 
presence of nitrogen notwithstanding. As it is idle to 
discuss the theoretical manurial value of a practical 
nuisance, which no sane farmer would take as a gift, it 
is imperative for us to discover means, if possible, by 
which those ingredients of sewage which have great 
em iching powers for the soil may be saved for the 
benefit of the cultivator and consumer. 
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 drain 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 
accomplishing this latter object, will depend upon the 
size of the establishment; 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 neighbour 
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 offensiveness. 
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 filtra¬ 
tion through the earth is effected with ease, which is 
proportionate to the thinness of the fluid. 
3. Remove all solid matter every day from the 
immediate neighbourhood of the house, and bury it in 
the top layer of cultivated ground. Pour the house¬ 
hold slops on to the surface of the garden, and do not 
make the mistake of attempting what is known as sub¬ 
soil 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 
practice 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. Hi3 second duty is to the garden, where he 
acts as under gardener. In the garden, which has an 
extent of about one-and-a-quarter acres, 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, Potatos, 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 overplus, 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 
millenium 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 he 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 artizan on 25s., 
who pays dearly for pigging it in overcrowded rooms, in 
which a cleanly and decent existence is impossible.— 
From an Address delivered by Dr. G. V. Poore at the 
Brighton Sanitary Congress. 
-- 
EARLY PURITAN POTATO. 
In the counties of Devon and Cornwall this Potato has 
had phenomenal success, and in my travels I have seen 
it grown under many conditions, and in every case the 
crop was pronounced satisfactory. Last year I saw the 
produce of a small lot which totaled up to about eighty 
pounds of sound tubers for every pound of seed planted, 
and this season the same result has been achieved n 
the neighbourhood of Exeter in the garden of Mr. T. 
Wippell, who resides in the parish of Alphington. He 
bought seven pounds of seed of Messrs. Yeitch, of 
Exeter, in March last, and after cutting out the 
sprouting eyes, planted them in a pretty good soil. On 
digging them last week, the produce turned the scale 
at 563 pounds, or over eighty pounds per pound return, 
all sound tubers, the few diseased ones not being 
reckoned at all. I like th'e Potato immensely myself. 
It is a shapely tuber, has a nice skin, looks well, cooks 
well, and has a capital flavour. And beyond these 
good qualities it is a variety which can be dug as soon 
as the potatos are large enough, half-grown tubers 
having all the flavour of the ripe ones. I believe it 
does equally well in the neighbourhood of London, for 
I saw a letter the other day from the Bishop of London’s 
gardener (Mr. Ballhatchet), a capital vegetable grower 
by tho way, and he reports most favourably of a trial 
of Early Puritan in the gardens of Fulham Palace.— 
Devoniensis. 
