SANITARY SCIENCE IN RURAL DISTRICTS. 
253 
ward filtration between the application of successive charges of 
sewage. On sewage being distributed over a plot by its gravity, it 
finds its way downwards toward the subsoil drains at a depth of 
four or five feet. As it descends it gets filtered and oxidised. Such 
a charge draws after it air, and when all the fluid has passed 
into the subsoil drains the soil is left charged with air sucked in by 
the descending fluid. In this way the land performs the office of 
a gigantic lung in bringing the impure matter in very close, 
chemically close, contact with the oxygen of the air. 
It is this property of the soil, then, which gives sewage farming 
all the elasticity it has ; but the greatest care must be exercised in 
applying sewage, so as not to sicken the growth. This is hard. 
Additional land is always acquired to equalize the consumption at 
unfavourable seasons. 
There is, it seems to me, a prosperous future for sewage farming 
on a small scale in rural districts. Every cottager ought to be 
impressed with the necessity of saving and applying where possible 
liquid sewage to his small plot ; while the farmer must be educated 
to exert his ingenuity as to its application. No such wasters as 
cesspools ought to be allowed at farm steadings. Mr. Mechi's life 
labour has been the advocacy of liquid manure, and it is well 
known how successfully he has accomplished his aim. 
At how few steadings do you find, not a liquid manure distributor, 
but any attention whatever paid to this part of the manure. If 
this subject were followed out as far as our experience warrants, 
how many cesspools, drains, and pools, evidences of waste and 
centres of offensive odours in rural districts, would vanish ? 
I have ventured to lay additional stress on this point of liquid 
manure, feeling certain that on its recognition by farmers as a 
valuable practical fertilizer, two-thirds of the sanitary defects in 
rural districts will be swept away, and to the gain of the 
agriculturists. 
