The Sun.
London, England, 1857-06-13 00:00:00

Mr. CilinWlCK—ln accordance with my promise to the
Council, I now -submit to the meeting the translation of a
report, made by eminent commissioners in Paris, on trial
werke to test the applicability of liquified town manure to
agricultural production: and in doing so I need net enlarge
on the importance of the question involved, whether the
whole of the excreta of the metropolis and of millions of
our town populations shall be retained to decompose, and
evaporate and wa-te within houses or beneath the sites of
towns, polluting the air at the expense of many thousands
of lives, and, I will. add, at the •expense also of millions of
money, the cost of excessive and preventable sickness,
premature disability, lost labour, and excessive mortality;
or whether v ist mass s of fertilising matter n ,w to be re-
moved from beneath dwellings by means of improved
drainage works, shall be thrown into the Thames and
other rivers, there to be worse than wasted. I beg leave,
however, to preface the reading of the report- with some
explanatory personal statements as to its antecedents, in
order to justify myself against -any impression of
an unauthorised intrusion and. in justification of
representations 'Which I felt it due to make at 'Path.
Being one of the international jury at the great exposi-
tion there, charged with the class of subjects in relation to
Hygiene, and beingelso named as one of a special commit-
tee of the Society of Arts to examine and report on thenew
works recently constructed there, and to, point out which
of them might be recommended as applicable to London,
without undervaluing the now architectural and decorative
arts, I thought I should best be enabled to meet the inqui-
ries of my colleagues of the section in Hygiene, and best
aid the society's mission, by examining the works beneath
the mew surface structures, by looking at the condition of
the poorer districts, and at the new works professedly for
the sanitary relief of the population. With the Eogineerin
Chef, with whom I was put in communication, Idescended
into and examined the latest and the largest new sewer,
the Sewer Sebastopol, and I saw there constructions such
as many of those recently executed in London, tho Ugh not
quite so unskilfully—such as the great Victoria-street
sewer, works of certain enormous coat, and probable good
profit to theconstructors, but, as I considered, of no equi-
valent benefit to the population of the houses by which they
passed—and this was a matter of actual experience—works
even of probable injury from the increase of foul gaseous
evaporations, and of very certain grievous additions to the
local taxation. Within the metropolis generally the air of
the houses was foetid, the population being oppressed by
the presence, and the waste by decomposition and evapo-
ration of the materials of the richest production, the im-
mediate and constant removal, and direct application of
which would give to the adjacent land the aid and fertility
of which it is susceptible and in need ; and the extent of
the need of the agriculture there may be judged of by
the fact reported on examinations and verified by
agriculturists, that, with all the advent ages of soil
and climate, the yield of wheat in the department of the
Seine, and indeed throughout France, does not average
more thin thirteen bushels an acre, that is to say,
about one-half of that old ordinary yield which my friend
Mr. Mecki; and others, are- denouncing, and by crops of
fifteen bushels an acre and more, are proving to be arri,ere,
and discreditable to our agriculture in England. Now, as
to the means of relieving the population from the oppres-
sion of the noxious evaporation from wasting manure per-
vading their habitations, which, in its effect, is far more
dire than any political oppression to which they can be
subjected. In my reprfrt of 1842, on the general sanitary
condition of the population of Great Britain, I held forth
that what— addressing agriculturists—l must cell the ac-
cumulation and waste of manure within habitations might
be prevented,—that for the constructions which accumulate
it,—cesspools, house drains of deposit, and sewers of de-
posit, which are only extended cesspool-,—self-cleansing
soil pan apparatus and tubular drains might be substituted
at a less annual rate of expense than farmers even c
fetch the.manure, empty the cesspools, and at an expense
n-
less thathat of annually cleansing the cesspool and the
sowers df deposit, and of retrioviug annually by any means
the residue of that manure, —two-thirds of the fertilising
matter of which, according to chemical evidence, is now
wasted by its retention during the year amidst habitations.
In large blocks of buildings, old as well as new, that pro-
-114 has been realised, and it is now in the course of reali-
sation in nearly one hundred of our provincial towns, at a
rate 'indicated by the manufacture of tubular branch
sewers and house drains, of which 50 miles a week are
made at Lambeth,—each mile serving, as far as I can esti-
mate, for between one and two thousand of population.
On a view of the condition and construction at Paris, I en-
tertained an equally strong conviction that the enormous
waste of enenure—s eelt within the city— might be pre-
vented, and its complete and immediate removal and the
relief of the population effected by the like self-acting con-
structions, at less than the annual charge of cleansing the
cesspools and removing the wasted residue which, I was told
upon official authority, was 4,000,000 francs per annum; or
say about 4f. per head of the population. Undoubtedly, the
work of the immediate removal of the manure in the state
best fitted for its immediate application is generally accom-
plished by our new works for a less expense than that.
It will be in the recollection of those present on the oc-
casion of our deputation, that after the answer to our ad-
dress had been given, his Majegty did me the honour to
ask me my opinion of the new works in progress in Paris.
I deemed it my duty to declare to him frankly, but respect-
fully, the facts as I found them ;—that, whilst all was fair
above, all was foul beneath. I said this because, whilst
from 60 to 70 per cent. of the houses in London have with-
in them those poison pits, the cess-pool, in Paris the cess-
pool system is universal, and maintained within private
premises, and 'formed under aggravated conditions within
the precincts of new and fine outside architectural construc-
tions. I-submitted, as worthy of his Majesty's notice,
what has been done in the model d wellings in London,
where epidemics have been almost entirely banished—as
they have, indeed, in many of the common lodging-houses
and dwellings of old construction,—and the death-rates
kept down steadily at 13 in a thousand ; the average death-
rate in all London being about 23 in a thousand, whilst in
all Paris, with the advantages of a superior position and
climate, the death-rates are 28 and 30 in a thousand ; the
excess in Paris being due, as I consider, chiefly, to the
greater predominepce of the cesspool and low sanitary con-
ditions, offensively perceptible to the senses, oven in the
houses of the highest class, and which at certain seasons of
the year make some quarters of Paris positively uninhabit-
able to those who can get away. On these facts I felt
warranted in observing, as I did most sincerely and respect-
fully, that it had been said that Augustus found Rome of
brick and left it of marble, but that his Majesty, the Empe-
ror of the French, would do far more for his people, if, find-
ing Paris stinking, he left it sweet. This I stated might be
accomplished with the less difficulty, from the narrow
area, on which the population was massed, the houses
being what I termed perpendicular streets. Paris, too,
is most favourably situated for the immediate application
of sewer or liquified manure to agricultural production. I
submitted to his notice, as deserving of special attention,
the works'in progress for the abolition of cess-pools in the
greater number of those of the English towns which are
under the Public Health Act ; and one town in particu-
lar, where the question of the prevention of the pollution
of rivers, and the application of sewerage to agricultural
production, the sanitary question, and the• inoffensive uti-
lisation of the manure, would, in disinterested, unpreju-
diced, and competent examination, be found to be practi-
cally resolved in a manner, peculiarly applicable to the
climate and much of the soil of France. His Majesty re-
ceived these and other representations to the like purport
with that Detention which he is so well known to give to all
measures of valuable promises for the improvement of the
great mass.of the population.._ I disclaimed any credit for
my own partial recommendations of that system, of which
Dr. Lyon Playfair (who was intimately conversant with
its initiation), at the society's meeting, where the subject
was last discussed, declared me to be the author ;—all I
asked was; for the impartial ()Lamination of the works al-
ready in operation, by his Majesty's own competent officers.
I, at the same time, submitted to his Majesty that thenew
mode of liquified manure culture was peculiarly suited to the
small farms of France, and stated for examination instances
of adoubleand threefold production obtained on small terms
in-England of only twenty-five acres or ten hectares in
extent. At a subsequent special audience, I presented to
him Mr. G. H. Walker, the owner of the lands irrigated
with the sewerage of Rugby, that his Majesty might
put his own questions on the important operations con-
ducted there, as he did most closely, when he appeared to
be somewhat surprised by the assurance of the now and
comparatively inoffensive condition in which the sewer-
age was now discharged from the new tubular sewers
and drains from the houses of that town, where all Cess-
pools are abolished, and the entire inoffensiveness of
the application of the fertilising matter to the lands in
the immediate vicinity of dwellings. The Prefect of the
Seine was present at the audience, -when he showed that
the examination of the new English work., which I recom-
mended, had -not been neglected; and it appeared that
although those works were only in partial operation at the
time the examinations were made, the reports were highly
favourable. I found, indeed, that the forms in operation
in England, under the system of liquified manure cultiva-
tion which I have promoted, had been examined by Mons.
Leone° de la Vergne, by Professor Moll, and by others,
and that the principle of culture, as well as the practice,
had their emphatic confirmation and reconimendatibli for
adoption, as well as that of Count Gasparin, the most
scientific agriculturist perhaps in Europe. Tinder these
circumstances I recommended the adoption of trial works,
near Paris itself, that French agriculturists might form
their own opinions on visible experience, and this measure
was approved. The prefect, however, objected, owing to the
practical difficulty of obtaining land for any extent of trial
in the inimpdiate vicinity of Paris. Having paced some of
the ramparts, the earthworks of which comprehend, as I
guessed, more than a thousand acres, I pointed them out
its being eligible for the purpose or as better than none ;
and, such as they were, I ventured to promise that on the
principle of culture I proposed, the milk of at least one
additional cow per acre might be obtained for the use of
Paris. On the motion of M. Dumas, the eminent chemist,
and member of the Institute, a sum of money for the trial
works was voted by the Municipal Council, and the direc-
tion of the trials was confided to Prof. Moll, the director of
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, at Paris, hit:al:telt a prac-
tical agriculturist, and the writer of an elementarytreatise,
which is popular in Belgium as well as in France, and to
the
it
first report of these commissioners which,
I now
and I do #e) believing it to be of peculiar interest on ac-
count of the application of town manures to a wide range
of culture, including many plants, to which, so far as I am
aware, its application has not before been made or obeerved.
I must, however, premise farther, that the manure applied
in the field works at Paris, though comprising the 1 natters
chiefly discharged in sewers, was not in the condition which
I have contemplated as sewer manure; it beine 'oli aspd,
therefore, decomposed manure, taken from the ctiools
where it has been retained for weeks and months, and, often
beyond a year, during Which time it has underarne a