from the earliest ages. We might here say a
great deal about China, had it anything to do
with our subject. But it has not. The climate
of China is as unlike that of England as the
habits of the people are.

Until the general introduction of sewers and
suppression of cesspits, and of house to house
water supply and suppression of wells, the sewage
of our great cities—and especially of London—
was a regular article of exchange between the
town and the country. The carts and waggons
that brought in hay, straw, and garden
vegetables, took back not only stable dung, as at
present, but the contents of cesspits, and found
in the latter a valuable manure, second only
in power and utility to the best farm-yard
dung.

The reports of Smith of Deanston, and his
directors and coadjutors at the Board of Health,
who were not practical agriculturists, and had
all the enthusiasm of amateurs to whom a
new branch of knowledge had been opened,
created great excitement in the speculative
world, The stores of neglected sewage were
measured against guano, and rather the
advantage was given to the sewage. Companies
were formed for desiccating and deodorising
the solid, and for distributing the liquid, and
extraordinary expectations were entertained of
the results.

The fact is, as chemists and practical
experience have since taught us, there is no sort
of likeness between sewage and guano, and no
sort of possible competition as long as the latter
exists. The value of guano consists in its
concentrated strength and consequent portability.
Theoretically, it contains seventeen times,
practically, twenty times, as much ammonia as the
very best specimen of farm-yard or human
manure, and ammonia, as already observed, is the
most powerful manurial ingredient in producing
cereal, which are the most profitable
crops.

But the amateurs who had the matter in hand,
being without experience, and excusably dazzled
by stories of Chinese and Italian cultivation,
pursued a theory which, had it been pecuniarily
sound, would have realised millions, and have
formed half the farms of England into irrigated
fields.

According to this theory, framed in forgetfulness
of the rainy nature of our climate, liquid
manure was superior to solid manure under all
circumstances, and on all crops, and all soils,
and town sewage was equal to the best liquid
manure. But this last theory was based on
another theory, viz. that the water of a town
properly sewered and fully supplied, would not
exceed twelve and a half gallons per head. On
the soundness of this theory, or rather bundle
of theories, which was authoritatively and
officially propounded for several years in Board of
Health Blue-books, much discussion arose in
agricultural circles, to which it is not now
necessary to refer, because we have enough
examples on a large scale, and enough evidence from
men in every respect competent to settle the
paying part of the question. In several counties
of England and Scotland farms were laid
out at vast expense for the express purpose of
converting all the farm dung into liquid; the
fields were covered with a network of iron pipes,
through which the liquid was forced by a
steam-engine, and distributed over the land in artificial
rain by hose and jet.

In Scotland, Mr. Telfer's farm of Cumming
Park, and Mr. Kennedy's of Myremill, were for
several years quoted as examples of the splendid
success of the liquid manure theory. Certain it
was that they both grew such crops of Italian
rye-grass (five and six cuttings more than eight
tons to the acre in one season) as had never
been heard of before. Mr. Telfer's was, perhaps,
the most beautiful model of dairy farming in
Europe. The cow-house was as clean as a
parlour, cleaner than most cottages; not a particle
of straw was used; the cows reposed on cocoa-nut
matting. The butter produced commanded
the very highest price in the London market.
Myremill farm, on a larger scale, was cultivated
with equal enterprise. But in England and in
Scotland, whether the cultivators were farmers,
or merchants, or retired tradesmen, the general
results were invariably the same. No instances
can be quoted of pecuniary success—the sole
test of success in agriculture—where it was
necessary to drive the liquid manure through
hose-jet by steam-power, or of the successful
application of liquid manure to clay soils. In
several instances the experiments ended in total
and disastrous ruin—the most enterprising being
the most unfortunate.

When the Western Bank of Scotland
suspended, the model farms of Gumming Park and
Myremill disappeared from the agricultural
world, in which for so many years they had
held so conspicuous a position. Nothing has
been more distinctly settled than that liquid
manure cannot bear the expense of hose-jet and
steam-engine on a really paying farm. It was
also found that the only crops that would bear
and repay the continuous application of liquid
manure were natural and Italian rye-grass,
grown on self-drained soils. There are seasons
of drought when a supply of water, or better
still of liquid manure, would be of the greatest
value in damping the earth, before or after
drilling roots, in reviving a transplanted crop
of cabbages or mangel-wurzel, or refreshing
corn in an early stage of growth, or saving
a hay crop; but the fact became, by every
year's experience, more prominent, that grass,
which grows for more months in the year
than any other crop, and which has, when cut,
an almost unlimited capacity for absorbing moisture,
and growing again, is the most profitable
crop for the application of a constant supply of
liquid manure. On the other hand, while under-piped
steam-worked liquid manure farms failed
to pay, wherever liquid manure was applied to
grass in the cheapest manner, by gravitation
through open channels or porous soils, the
results were satisfactory, and often very profitable.
But it is necessary to keep in mind that modern