The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-25 00:00:00

Baron Liebig on Metropolitan Sewage.

COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL.
Yesterday, at 3 o'clock, a special meeting of the Common
Council was convened by the Lord Mayor at Guildhall for
the purpose of hearing a communication which he had re-
ceived from Baron Liebig, the eminent agricultural chemist,-
and President of the Royal Academy of Science at Munich,
on the subject of the utilisation of the sewage of the metro-
polis. There was a large attendance of the members of the
Council, though they had been hastily summoned to meet.
The Town Clerk (Mr. Woodthorpe) proceeded to read
the letter of Baron Liebeg, which was dated Munich, Jan.
19, and addressed to the Lord Mayor. "In compliance
(the writer said) with a request on the part of the corpora-
tion he had the honour to send his lordship his views on
the utilisation of the sewage of the metropolis. After a pro-
found and admirable investigation of the sanitary, engi-
neering, and agricultural questions connected with the
sewage, the select committee of the House of Commons, under
the presidency of Lord Robert Montagu, came to the conclu-
sion that it was not only possible to utilise sewage, but that
by its application to agricultural purposes, if properly con-
ducted, great benefits might be derived from its use both by
the country at large and the towns which furnished it. An
attentive observation of what had been written and spoken
on this question led him (Baron Liebig) to believe that the .
greater number of persons in England, even the more en-
lightened, looked upon sewage as a nuisance ; they thought
it ought to be got rid of by any means, and the more quickly
the better. It was to those who entertained such opinions
that he should chiefly address his remarks, and if his en-
deavours to convince them of the money value of the com-
modity should be successful, and thus prevent over-hasty
stops being taken, the task he had set himself would be ful-
filled. Those questions, therefore, which had been eluci-
dated already by the report of the select committee of the
House of Commons he should leave untouched, and should
confine himself wholly to endeavour to put in their proper
light before the farmers, the inhabitants of towns, and the
Legislature those facts and principles which ought to be
taken as guides in any estimate of the worth and import-
ance of sewage. With regard to his computation of its
value, his Lordship would have the goodness to
accept the numbers here given for neither more nor less
than they were intended—as a starting point, namely,
for certain calculations in order to reduce to a more tangible
form the result of his inquiries. These figures were not
put forth as absolutely correct; indeed, in the present
state of matters no person in the world was able to state
them with perfect accuracy. Whoever was conversant with
the history of agriculture would know that in the latter
half of the last century practice found a means by the cul-
tivation of clover and other fodder forlputting an end to the
three-fold system, and for beginning a new one of rotation
of crops. The result was an increase in the agricultural
produce, which hitherto had been regularly diminishing.
The pith of the new system adopted was combined in the
following aphorism The more fodder the more flesh,
the more flesh the more manure, the more manure the more
grain.' At that time no one had any correct idea of the
cause of the fertility of the soil or the effect of manure, nor
did it then occur to anybody that the fertility of the closer-
fields would ever have an end. The whole system of farm-
ing was based on the production of farmyard manure by
means of fields of fodder. That a cloverfield could not form
an exception to general laws, but must be subjected to the
same conditions as a cornfield, was clear enough ; and a
time must therefore come when manuring would be as
much a necessity for one as for the other in order to main-
tain its productiveness. For the cornfields stable manure
was indispensable, but for the clover and other fodder fields
none was to be had. Years passed, and certain strange pe-
culiarities manifested themselves in these fodder fields ; in.
many clover fields the plants died away ; turnips, too, would
not thrive any more as they had done. The very expression,
' clover sickness,' showed that the cause was not supposed
to lie in exhaustion of the soil, as in the case of cornfields,
but was thought to arise from the field being ailing. At
the High School of Farming at Hohenheim it had become .
a dogma that the producibleness of a farm could be last-
ingly maintained by the proper rotation of crops without a,
supply of manure from without. In an analysis of the
Hohenheim farming he had the opportunity of showing last
year that in the period of 1852-60 the quantity of farmyard
manure was a third (550) tons more, and the quantity of
corn and rapeseed crops one-fourth to one-third less than in
1832-40. PI actice itself was compelled to avow that its sys-
tem had no foundation ; the more grain' did not correspond
with 'the more manure.' Such were the final results of
high farming and stable dung alone ; in one district the
crops of fodder, in others the corn harvests, diminished
Towards the end of last century practice found in gypsum
and latbr in bone-dust, a means by which the decrease in
the yield of the fodder and the corn fields might be arrested
and the former productivity of the soil be restored. Then
came superphosphate of lime and Peruvian guano into use,
and many farmers were convinced that it would be difficult
to maintain the produce of flesh and corn at its present
height without the application of guano. What a crop was
to come from when the supply of guano had ceased never
occupied their thoughts, for farmers were generally not in-
clined to think of the evils of the morrow ; with them

'Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof.' Now, however,
they knew the cause of the efficacy of phosphate and
Peruvian guano. They knew with certainty that the cause
of fertility lay in certain constituents of the soil, which served
for the formation of the body of the plants, of the roots, of
th• leaves and fruit ; that the quantity of these in the
ground was very limited ; and that man, with all his art and
skill, was unable to get fruit from a field when such con-
stituents were wanting. These, as long as they were in

the ground, were called ' alimentary matters,' but out of it
manures.' Both names signified the same thing. It was
now clear that in theproducts which the farmer brought to
market he sold a part of the active agents of his fields, and
that, accordingly the harvests must gradually grow less in
the same ratio as the condition for its production decreased.
The effect of phosphates (bone-dust) and of guano was to
restore to the soil two conditions of fertility—phosphoric
acid and nitrogen, which it had lost by centuries of cultiva-
tion and removal. The produce of the field diminished
with the decrease of these stores, but which on being aug-
mented again put the field into its former state. Reason
told them that a natural phenomenon could not return with
constancy if the causes of it were fluctuating, and that
a field could not constantly yield crops if the conditions
of their growth constantly decreased. There was, per-
haps, no land where the truth of this simple law of
nature was so patent as in England. The British farmer
had been enabled to win from his fields crops surpassing
those which had ever been gained from a like superficies ;
not, however, because he was more skilful and diligent than
the husbandman of other lands, but because he acted more
in harmony with the law on which production depended.

In no country as in England was the farmer so ready to give
a part of his profits for the purchase of manures; nowhere
was he mare convinced that without their addition it would
be impossible to preserve for a continuance the present
high produce of his fields. But, considering the means
by which they were obtained, the high crops were
not signs of a lasting store of their conditions in the
fields, but symptoms of exhaustion. The British farmer
_
considered an outlay for manure not as a doubtfulexpengoodid
ture, but rather as an investment of capital which bore
the menu-
interest. What distinguished the farmer fromustomed to cal-
culate was that the former was not so
material which
was
yguwidhedat
bcuelabeteuagsbtthatie latter.
eTdhaecmeuazutefia;ttutreeinr
es,
he
ee
bad efehorosehrniknas:ltecahinedhe
right.
axwt
,ach 0 w
ev Theer
while the farmer
he intended to work up with his machines,
in the choice of fitting
manurescalled experience. He must
anent had told him what manure
by vague notions whichifg
ns'lei:safield required he was as yet unac-
quaintedtwmaietefeeoruhuims
ycruofpbtios
and in what quantdity
that
was the reason why he was almost
with, an
he would soon appreciate.
when experience taught him
its effects. Upto
this time many farmers were stiff
of opinion that stable dung, phosphate, and Peruvian
were sufficient to maintain their fields in a state of
unable to estimate the worthof sewage.
guano
fertility. That might be true for certain fields and for a
certain number of years, but the supply of Peruvian guano
must soon have an end, and an analysis of bones and guano
ashes showed that in onv there was no potash, that in the
stable
dung,
other only traces of it were to be found—an ingredient
which
wimapsoartleaenitnandisdpemnosastbeleffifeeirentbte maintenance
h formed
and an
of the corn and fodder crops. Sewage was especially rich
in ammonia and potash, which latter failed in the manures
sold by the trade, and when it was employed then only was
the system of culture a rational oneN
At this stage of the reading of Baron Liebig's communi-
cation, the town-clerk, when he had not read more than a
third of it, was interrupted by Deputy SNELLING moving
that the report in its entirety be remitted to the Coal, Corn,
and Finance Committee, to whom the subject of the utili-
sation of sewage had been referred for consideration, in
order to its being printed and circulated among the mem-
. bers of the Common Council.
The motion was at once adopted, and the Court ad..
I journed.

THE DISPUTE IN THE BUILDING TRADES.—The
withdrawal of the discharge note has not yet led to a
resumption of work by the men. It is in their opinion
necessary that some regulations as to the future should be
agreed upon both by the masters and themselves before
they return to their employment.

PALL-MALL GAZETTE.
An Evening Newspaper and Review.
Office, 14, Salisbnry-stree,t, Strand, W.C.

.............
T"

HER MAJESTY'S TirEATRE.
Sole Munager and Director, Mr. W. Harrison.
TILLS EV ENING, FAUST. Mesdames Anna Hiles,
flurrington, 'Cotterell; Alessrs. Swift, Forbes, H. Cori, and
Marct.esi.

Conductor, Signor ARDITL
Folloared by the Grand Christmas Pall*OrniMe, THE
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