The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-07-27 00:00:00

SEWAGE MANURE

The importance of this subject, in a social and national,
as well as an agricultural point of view, induces us to de-
vote a short space to an outline of the objects and plans
of the " Metropolitan Sewage Manure Company," who
are destined to work this important change in agricultural
science in this country, for we feel assured, that at a time
when masses of the community have suffered severely
from a scarcity of the produce of the earth, the objects of
such a company cannot fail to be viewed with deep and
peculiar interest.
Scarcely two years have elapsed since this company
came first before the public. Its intentions and plans,
although appreciated by a few who had tested the great
value, from its highly fertilising, of sewage water, was
then to the public at large a matter of strange import. In
the short space of time that has intervened, however,.
almost universal attention has been most surprisingly
drawn to the subject, until public associations (stepping
out of the ordinary routine of their procedure) have, on
public grounds, lauded the scheme. Agriculturists have•
prayed the senate for the authority to be given for its adop-
tion ; private individuals of wealth have, on a limited
scale, carried it into effect on their estates ; government
departments have, where opportuity offered, brought it
into operation ; die surveying officers of her Majesty's
Commissioners of Woods and Forests have pronounced it
to be a scheme of national importance, and the legislature
itself has stamped it with .a more than ordinary approval.
This company is incorporated for the purpose of con-
veying the contents of the sewers—the refuse of the me-
tropolis, organic and inorganic, blended into one homo-
geneous fluid, in which the individual constituents are no
longer recognized—into the country, and by means of a
system of pumping engines and pipes to distribute the
fertilizing liquid, before it has had time to putrify, or give
out offensive and injurious gases, over the land, in such
manner and proportion as may be best adapted to the
various kinds of field and garden cultivation ; to work the
same wonders as it has done on the blowing sands of
Edinburgh, or the barren wastes of Mansfield.

The fa-cility and cheapness with which this manure may
be applied to the land, will at once suggest itself to the
most casual observer. The average quantity required for
agriculture is estimated at SO tons per acre, which can be
supplied at less than a quarter of the smallest cost of
stable or farm-yard manure, containing the same propor-
tion of fertilizing matter, while the liquid, in its results,
is far more efficient and productive, and can be distributed
with far greater facility and convenience, at one-tenth of
the expence. By means of hose, attached to a stand pipe,
the liquid, under a pressure of some 156 feet; may be
made to flow in a rapid and continuous jet, sufficient, at
the end of half-a-mile of hose, to irrigate every portion of
an area of two acres of land. All the manure necessary
to produce, for a field of such extent, a very high state of
fertility, may thus be applied in two hours time, at a cost
in labour of perhaps two shillings !
The surprising effects of the use of the sewage water
as manure can no longer be viewed, even by the most in-
credulous, as theoretical. Its astonishing results have
long since been exemplified in the neighbourhood of
Edinburgh, where it has been the means of r -
rental of sandy soil from 2s 6d. to

15 per

land from £3 to, in one instance, the incredible yearly
value of £57 ; and more recently, in our own immediate
neighbourhood, showing more than a tenfold increase of
crop. The well-known Isleworth strawberries, so noted
for size and delicacy of flavour, are manured by sewer
water, and it is probably not generally known that the
luxuriance of the far-famed vine at Hampton Court is to
be attributed to the fact that its roots have crept through
the walls of an adjoining sewer, and taken the benefit of
its waters; and several eminent horticulturists, in the
vicinity of London, have practically demo nstrated the
amazing value of this manure on their own ground. At
Mr. Diet inson's farm at Willisden, near Harrow ; see
also an account of the Duke 9f Portland's :cater Dna'

9wa, near Maueficld.