town sewage is a very much more diluted fluid
than the liquid manure of a well-managed farm,
to which guano and super-phosphate are not
unfrequently added.

All towns completely sewered have very far
exceeded the estimate of twelve and a half
gallons of water per head. There are no towns
supplied with water closets in which the sewers
do not receive, from one source or another,
upwards of thirty gallons of water per head per
day. In London the supply is over forty gallons
per head. Now every gallon of water, beyond
four or five, diminishes the manurial value of the
sewage.

But here, again, we need not theorise. In
eight towns, sewage has been applied to
agricultural purposes. An examination of
the experience of these towns brings out
plainly certain very important facts. The eight
towns are: Alnwick, Croydon, Carlisle,
Edinburgh, Malvern, Tavistock, Rugby, and
Watford.

The mode of application and the result of the
application in these towns is given in a table
(which it would take up too much space to
quote), to be found in the Appendix of a very
comprehensive pamphlet on the Value of London
Sewage.* From this table we find that in all
the instances in which the distributing arrangements
are actually at work, the application is
exclusively to either natural grass or to artificial,
such as Italian rye-grass. That in the instances
which are most conspicuously successful in a
pecuniary point of view, viz. Edinburgh,
Carlisle, Croydon, Malvern, and Tavistock, the
application is by gravitation on the water-meadow
system in opposition to subterranean tubes,
hose, and jet. That at Rugby, which was
underpiped and is worked by a steam-engine,
the hose and jet has been abandoned in favour
of open channels, and at Watford the sewage,
which was expected to be available for even the
two hundred acres underpiped, is applied to
growing rye-grass on seven or eight acres. At
Rugby, the sewage which Mr. Campbell rented
for two hundred acres is applied to about twelve
acres of grass. In all the examples the success is
the greatest where the land is porous, self-drained,
and so situated that the sewage can flow over the
surface from field to field until all the fertilising
matter is absorbed. In Edinburgh, pure
sea-sand, irrigated with sewage, has for more than
forty years yielded enormous quantities of
produce in grass, worth every year twenty-five to
thirty-five pounds an acre, and at Croydon,
although it is more difficult to arrive at the true
profit, because the experiment is recent the
proceeds being divided between the landlord, the
Croydon Board of Health, which is the first
tenant, and Mr. Marriage, the farmer, who rents
it from the Board of Health there is no doubt
the value of the produce is about the same as
at Edinburgh.
* The Agricultural Value of the Sewage of
London. Stanford, Charing-cross.

At Alnwick, which has been sewered and
supplied with water on the most modern system
by Mr. Robert Rawlinson, C.E., the sewage
can only be raised to the requisite height by a
steam-engine, and then the climate being very
rainy, the farmers did not find the increase in
crass crops equal to the expense of the pumping
apparatus, and after two years declined to
pay for the pumping.

It is with this experience before them that
the Metropolitan Board of Works have been
called on to select a plan for turning the
sewage of London to use, and saving the
Thames, at Barking, from pollution. For at
Barking, according to the original main drainage
scheme, the sewage of nearly two
million inhabitants of the north side of the
Thames was to be poured into the river at
low water.

The sewage of London cannot be applied to
land with the same facility as the outpourings of
a village or the contents of a farm tank. First,
the contents are enormous, and the tide
constant, running day and night. If the Thames is
to be kept clear every day, two hundred and
seventy-seven thousand tons, or about ten
million of cubic feet, which would fill a lake
of seventy-five acres three feet deep, must be
laid upon land of a character which will absorb
it without creating a nuisance an awful foul
and murky stream, scarcely to be realised without
being seen, has to be disposed of. Next, the
manurial virtues of this stream, in which the
excreta of each person are diluted in more than
forty gallons of water, are very feeble. If the
water supply of London could have been
restrained within Mr. Edwin Chadwick's estimate
of twelve and a half gallons per head, then the
demand amongst farmers would have been much
more active. Such a liquid sold at twopence per
ton would have secured to each purchaser, for
something like fourpence-halfpenny per acre,
the annual excreta of one inhabitant. But all
men of practical and scientific experience are
agreed that, to make the most of the sewage of
London, thousands of tons must be poured on
the poorest and sandiest soil that can be found,
and then the marvels of the Edinburgh
Craigentemy meadows may be renewed, and land
not worth five shillings an acre made worth five
or six hundred pounds.

On this point agriculturists, agricultural
chemists, and engineers of special experience,
are entirely agreed. The Metropolitan Board,
before deciding on the merits of the various
schemes submitted to them for the utilisation of
the sewage of London, had the advantage of
being able to read the evidence taken in two
successive years before two committees of the
House of Commons. The unanimity amongst
those whom practical experience and scientific
research rendered peculiarly competent
witnesses, was remarkable. No man has paid more
attention to the question of utilising town
sewage than Mr. Hubert Rawlinson, one of the
engineer inspectors of the first Board of Health.
He has had great experience, and his experience